Sixteen and Summer!
by William Easley
Summary: The Mystery Twins set out for their fifth summer in Gravity Falls, looking ahead with excitement and, well, Dipper is Dipper, with some fears and worries. Adventure and mystery lie ahead, along with a little bit of Wendip. Climb aboard and buckle your seat belts. It may be a bumpy ride. . . .Rated T for language and some nudity and suggested intimate but not explicit activity.
1. Chapter 1

**Sixteen and Summer!**

 **(May-June 2016)**

* * *

 **1: The Road Home**

The state track meet wasn't held in a hot venue, fortunately, but at a school named Cascade Heights. North of San Francisco, the climate was cooler and drier, good for runners, and Dipper sprinted as well as he ever had—though he did not set a new record (he tied a previous one), he didn't have to eke out a victory, but won his event handily, three strides in front of the second-place sprinter.

The victory made him Varsity state champion for the hundred-meter dash. The crowd cheered him, with very few boos mixed in from supporters of the schools that came in second, third, or bringing up the end of the roster.

His teammates congratulated him, slapping him on the back, handing him a bottle of chilled water—his victory shone as a bright spot in a mediocre day for Piedmont overall, with the team eventually losing more events than it won. They did manage two first-place wins, Dipper's and Stella Morris's in the girls' 800 meter, and then three second places and five third. Not too shabby for a state meet, but not the best they had ever done, either, and their school ranked only fifth overall in the number of medals won.

Anyway, at the end of the hundred-meter, Coach, in his gruff way, had mumbled, "Not bad, Pines." By now Dipper had learned to expect no more from Jorgenson, who was as stingy with his praise as Grunkle Stan once had been with his money. The big red-faced man's expression remained stony, but the words—though spoken with what sounded like a grudging tone—pleased Dipper.

He said, "Thanks, Coach," and turned and looked up in the stands. Mabel, conspicuous in purple and gold was jumping up and down and waving wildly, probably chanting cheers, though the crowd noise drowned them out. Grunkle Stan sat near her, leaning back. He grinned and gave Dipper two thumbs-up. Wanda and Alex, beside Stan, waved at Dipper. Stan punched Alex lightly on the shoulder and said something that made Dipper's dad laugh.

Good old Grunkle Stan. The week before, he had made Mabel deliriously happy by calling their mom and talking her into the scheme Mabel had first come up with: "Hey, Wanda, I been thinkin', your kids could use some wheels up here. I'm gonna fly down for Dipper's track meet, and then I'll drive back up with them in that hideous green car of Mabel's."

"It's not Mabel's," Wanda had said. "It belongs to both of them."

"Oh? OK, from what I heard, I thought it was just Mabel's. Even better! That way as we drive up, both kids can get more time behind the wheel. Teen drivers who get good practice are safer, ya know. I'll ride shotgun and critique their drivin' skills. Remember, they put in most of their pre-license drivin' time up here with us, and I filled out a lot of their logs myself."

"Are you sure?" Mrs. Pines had asked, wavering. "It won't be a bother?"

"Nah, it'll be fun, catchin' up with them on the way up. I'll rotate, so each of them gets, like, two hours of drivin' in at a time. And I'll take over if they get tired. You know, I don't have any moving violations on my driving record at all." Which was true. One thing he'd done when his twin brother Stanford had taken his top-secret quasi-government job recently was to persuade Ford to erase all of his semi-criminal records from existence.

Mom consented at last, and so there Stan had been at the championship meet, looking fit and healthy and happy. He didn't tell Mr. and Mrs. Pines—though surely they suspected—that Mabel had called him with her scheme and he'd instantly agreed to it.

After the match, they all drove sixty miles back to Piedmont together, sort of squashed into Mom's SUV—though Stan had lost much of his gut, he still covered a lot of ground—and making plans.

"Yeah," Stan said to Mr. and Mrs. Pines, "you guys gotta come up for the fifteenth of next month. That's me and Ford's birthday. You don't hafta bring presents, but bring yourselves. You get to our age, family's real important. Me and Sheila will be in the new house—we're movin' in this week—and we got a real nice guest room for you."

"And bring Billy!" Mabel reminded her parents. "He wants to see Gravity Falls, and you guys are his best chance!"

On the drive back to Piedmont, they arranged it: Mom and Dad Pines would drive up on the fourteenth of June, bringing Billy Sheaffer along with them. They'd stay with Stan and Sheila—or, maybe, with the McGuckets, who were feeling a little lonely after their long-time house guests Stan and Sheila had moved out. And they would stay from Tuesday through Saturday, driving back home on Sunday.

"We'll have to check with Billy's parents," Wanda said.

"Already taken care of!" Mabel announced proudly. "I asked them nicely. They've given the green light!"

Stan nudged Dipper. "You're awfully quiet."

"Just tired," Dipper said. "I ran pretty hard." Which was true, but physical exhaustion had nothing to do with it. Dipper was wondering about how Billy Sheaffer—the human reincarnation of Bill Cipher—would react to Gravity Falls. Wondering and worrying, because the events of the rift between dimensions and Weirdmageddon still came to him in nightmares.

That wasn't his only concern, either. He worried about his parents—so far, their brief visits to Gravity Falls had avoided any spectacular strangeness, but that sort of luck couldn't hold forever. They were already sort of prepared to meet Gnomes, whom they mistakenly believed to be descendants of a troupe of little people who had been circus performers before settling in to Gravity Falls. Nowadays, the Pines thought, the short folks just donned costumes and acted the parts of Gnomes as a tourist attraction.

Well—that was Mabel's story, and she was sticking to it. The deception was necessary because, to a surprising degree, Gnomes had become part of the everyday scene in Gravity Falls, taking jobs nobody else wanted and carrying on regular social actions with the humans.

Restaurants had started to stock special high chairs in Gnome sizes and to serve Gnomes special dishes (that is, smooshed-together leftovers from meals humans hadn't finished. The Gnomes loved it, and the Health Department had decided they could look the other way, since the arrangement did no harm and took care of a garbage problem besides).

Jeff and a few others were regulars at the Skull Fracture, where they could out-drink everyone except Manly Dan. The human patrons of the hangout welcomed them because the Gnomes liked to play cards and were rotten at counting. But they had money to burn, so—

Anyway, Dipper was sure that Wanda and Alex would see, and maybe talk to, at least a few Gnomes. As for the rest—well, the Manotaurs didn't come into town very much, and with luck none of the other strange animals or inhabitants would show up for those few days in June. If they could get past the Gnomes, maybe Alex and Wanda wouldn't have any major shocks.

Though there was no telling who or what might drop in for the elder twins' birthday bash.

Oh, well. Play it by ear, Dipper decided.

But, being Dipper, he couldn't help worrying.

* * *

Stan was great that evening. He insisted on taking everyone out to eat—"Wanda, it's been a long day, you're too tired to cook, c'mon, it's on me!"

They ate at Wanda's favorite place, and Stan kept everyone laughing as he told stories of his woes as a new homeowner—getting the wrong stove, having to replace it, discovering the pool table was too big to get through the downstairs door without being disassembled, fouling up the air-conditioner settings when he and his wife spent their first night in the new place ("I swear, the toilet skimmed over with ice!"), but now they were ready to move in permanently, and everything would be all right. "I think you'll really love the place. We do."

After a night of sleep—though Mabel tiptoed into Dipper's room and like little kids they giggled and talked about the summer that lay before them—they got up extra early the next day.

They set out for Gravity Falls that morning, Sunday, May 29. It was a warm day, Helen Wheels—the Mystery Twins' unforgettably green Carino—rode low on her shocks from all the stuff they had piled in, though Stan had sternly forbidden them from filling the back seat—"Whoever rides back there might wanna stretch out"—and at their grunkle's suggestion, Dipper took the first time at the wheel.

Mabel sat in the back, complaining. "I should take the first two hours. Helen's used to me!"

That was probably true, insofar as an inanimate and insensate object could be used to anything. Though the car belonged to both twins equally, Mabel had driven it far more often than Dipper—about 75% of the time. Dipper didn't complain, because driving made her happy and she didn't complain, which in turn made him happy.

Surprisingly, though, almost as soon as they were out of the Pines driveway, Stan growled, "Dip, you wanna let Mabel go first, or what?"

"It's OK with me," Dipper said.

"Yay! You're the best brother I ever had!" Mabel crowed.

"OK, OK, Dipper, turn left at the corner there."

"But the freeway is in the other—"

"We gotta change drivers, so just do what I say, kiddo," Stan said.

Dipper turned out of the residential area, onto a main street, and Stan said, "Let me find a good place—there, that parkin' lot up ahead on the right. Pull in there and find a slot and Mabel can take the wheel."

"The Rusty Roof?" Dipper asked. It was an inexpensive—not to say cheap—motel. But the parking lot had a good many empty slots, so he made the turn and glided Helen Wheels to a stop.

"Might as well get out and stretch my legs," Stan said.

"We just started!" Dipper said.

Putting on a mock frown, Stan said, "I'm old, my legs cramp easy!"

They all got out—though Mabel immediately jumped back in, behind the wheel—and Stan stood in front of the car, elaborately stretching. The lobby door of the motel opened, and out into the early-morning sunlight came—

"Wendy!" Dipper yelled. He ran toward her.

She grinned. She was wearing the old Wendy outfit, green-plaid shirt, well-worn jeans, boots—and Dipper's pine-tree hat. She swung an overnight bag, which she dropped as Dipper rushed up to hug her. "Hiya, dorks!" she said. "Mmph!"

"Hey, hey, get a room," Stan said with a grin as he picked up Wendy's small suitcase. "Let's see if we can cram this into the trunk and then we'll get on the road. Surprised, Dip?"

"Oh, yeah," Dipper said, feeling as if his grin were going to spread so wide that the corners would meet at the back of his neck. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Wendy put her arm around him as they walked toward the car, where Mabel waived wildly from the driver's window. "Eh, me and Stan figured that we'll have to let your folks know pretty soon how we feel about each other. But not hardly yet. I flew down with Stan, but I spent the night at this place so's not to make your folks suspicious or anything. Hey, Dip, Stan called me last night—congrats, man! State champ again! That is so awesome!"

"Not as awesome as you," Dipper said.

Mabel blared the horn just as they reached Helen Wheels. "Shake a leg! Get in! Gravity Falls is waiting!"

" _Shake a leg_?" Wendy asked, chuckling.

"It's hanging around Stan that gets her talking that way," Dipper said, opening the back door for her. "I can't get over this! You look so great!"

After somehow Tetris-ing the overnight bag into the trunk, Grunkle Stan got in the front passenger seat, and Wendy and Dipper sat in the back, and as soon as seat belts had been buckled, Mabel pulled out of the parking lot.

"Your hair's grown a lot since April," Dipper said, caressing it, feeling it silky under his fingertips.

Wendy leaned against him. "Yeah, it grows fast. It'll be middle of my back before summer's over." She squeezed his hand and sent him a mental message: _You like it better long?_

— _I love it any way you wear it, Lumberjack Girl. It's so great to see you again! I'm sorry I've got your trapper's hat packed away somewhere in the trunk._

 _Don't worry. We'll have plenty of time to swap hats when we get home._

 _Home._ Of course, Gravity Falls was Wendy's home, but Dipper had come to feel it was his home, too. His second home, maybe. Or his heart's home.

Wendy said, "Hey, I gotta tell you guys about the latest weirdness. A plague of frog."

"Plague of _frog_?" Dipper asked. "Don't you mean—"

"Shut your yaps and save it," Stan said from the front seat. "It'll keep, and we oughta just enjoy the ride while we can. Don't hit that semi, Mabel."

"I'm on it," Mabel said.

"Yeah," Wendy said, squeezing Dipper's hand. "It'll keep." _We're gonna have the best summer yet, Dip!_

— _Looking forward to it, Wen!_

Dipper settled back, Mabel took the ramp onto the freeway—"Outa my way, slowpokes!"—and they settled back to the happy drive north.

It was a long way—about twelve hours of driving, not counting bathroom breaks or meals—but Dipper enjoyed every mile and every minute of it, and for that time, at least, his worries about Billy Sheaffer and what might happen simply evaporated.

* * *

 _Author's Note_

 _Just the usual disclaimer. Gravity Falls is the property of Disney and its creator, Alex Hirsch. I don't own the show or the characters, and I make no money from writing fanfiction. I do it to practice and improve my skills as a writer, and because I love the show, and because I hope the stories will please readers. Now let's set off for the twins's fifth summer in Gravity Falls._


	2. Chapter 2

**Sixteen and Summer!**

 **(May-June 2016)**

* * *

 **2: Arriving in Style**

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _(Late Sunday night, May 29)-It was so great to drive up—hours and hours with Wendy! Mabel drove us up to Maxwell, which is a little town about 115 miles north of where we live, and Stan said it was time to change drivers._

 _We tooled into town, found a little place called Kit's Country Corner, and went in for breakfast—we were so excited leaving home that morning that we'd just had coffee and toast, and Wendy said that at her motel, she'd just had coffee and a vending-machine cupcake._

 _It was almost ten, but the café was still serving breakfast, so Mabel had their California Special, which was a big veggie omelet with avocado toast, turkey sausage, and OJ, and Wendy and I both had a couple of eggs, some bacon, hash-browns, and whole-wheat toast, with juice and coffee. Stan ordered a stack of silver-dollar pancakes with two fried eggs and sausage and chased it all down with three mugs of so-so coffee._

 _Then Stan and Mabel took the back seat, I got behind the wheel, and Wendy rode shotgun. Mabel burped comfortably. "Helps to know breakfast's not coming back," she said, sounding sleepy. "I mean, I love flying, but Coastal Air has elected me Miss Barf Bag!"_

 _At first she tried to remote-control me from the back seat: "Now, you're gonna want to stay in the left lane, 'cause the ramp to 5 leads off . . .." But soon enough she got engrossed in the scenery, and I drove in peace._

 _The Carino has a CD player, and Wendy popped in the Tombstones' new disc. It was OK, sort of a strange country-metal effect, though Stan groused he'd rather hear the semis that were passing us. He didn't complain too much, though. I think he has a soft spot for the Tombstones because when Robbie and the gang were out of money that one time, he hired them to do a gig and let them get their van back from the repair shop. They've always been grateful and come back to Woodstick every year. Anyway._

 _Shaped up to be a nice day, sunny with puffy white clouds drifting past. Wendy offered to spell me if I got tired of driving, but how could I? Heading to Gravity Falls with my girl—MY girl!—by my side. It wasn't a bad drive. This one time up around Redding there'd been a wreck—looked like a Ford had side-swiped a VW—and we had to creep around that. But aside from the delay, it was smooth going. When we got up as far as Dunsmuir, it was time for a bathroom break and a walk-around-and-stretch-your-legs._

 _Then Mabel took over again. We got to the Oregon border in less than two hours, and when we were in that little gap between the sign that tells you you're leaving California and the one that welcomes you to Oregon, Mabel said, "Remember this, Brobro? When we were going the other direction that one time?"_

" _It's where Blendin Blandin stopped our bus back when we were twelve and headed back home," I said. For Stan's and Wendy's benefit, I added, "I told you guys about that."_

" _Yeah, the time-travel jerk that stole my favorite screwdriver," Grunkle Stan said. "Next time you see him, tell him I want it back! With five dollars rent. Make that fifty!"_

 _Ignoring Stan, Wendy said, "And you guys did something with him that kept the Time Baby from being, like, erased."_

" _Yeah," Mabel said. "And then we had to do it again, last spring! 'Cause Blendin was stuck in the past and we had to spring him so he could go to the future, which was 2012, but the past for us, so he could fix the past so the present would work out right. Time travel is the pits."_

 _We passed the turn-off for Siskiyou Summit, and I remembered when Wendy—whom my folks thought was older than she really was—came down and drove us up for Christmas that time. We'd pulled off 5 and stopped for a cold picnic there and that was when I found out how much she loved the taste of peppermint. Which kinda started a thing of ours._

 _This time we didn't have any reason to stop, but I mentally sent Wendy a reminder, and got back the news that she had been thinking the same thing! Then we were on that stretch of the Pacific Highway where the mountains were over to our right, and we had this great view to the west, across a broad valley. Once one of those little Spider two-seater sports cars chugged around and swerved back in our lane too quickly, and Mabel swore, "Dammit!"_

" _Now, now, Pumpkin!" Grunkle Stan scolded. "Remember what I told you about the rules of the road."_

" _Oh, yeah," Mabel said. She rolled down her window, leaned to the side, and screamed, "Who taught you how to drive, hotshot? You craptastic muck-for-brains freakin' road hog!" And she shook her fist._

" _Attagirl," Stan said. "You did pretty good. Only next time, say the REAL words."_

 _Mabel still had like forty minutes on her shift, so Wendy and I held hands and did our telepathy thing, catching up. I told her that the second book in my kids' series was coming out in mid-June, pre-sales strong and Amazone already racking up pre-orders, and that I had the third one in second-draft. The title had finally settled down to "Wax Attacks!", and it was a fictionalized telling of how the wax figures had come alive in the Shack that time, plus a really fictionalized version of how a fake kid psychic stalked the sister. It would've been a short book if I hadn't combined the ideas. Anyway, I had packed a copy of the manuscript, and Wendy wanted to read it._

 _We changed drivers again in Grants Pass, where we also got gas and hit an Up 'n Down Burger for a fast-food lunch. It was getting on for two by then. Wendy suggested I get off the freeway at Roseburg and go up to Gravity Falls the back way. That's State Highway 138, and driving along it made my heart beat faster, because the scenery, the trees, the hills, the mountains, started to look so much like Gravity Falls._

 _When my two hours were up, we were still maybe ninety minutes out, but Mabel insisted on having her last turn, so we stopped at a gas station, topped up, and switched drivers._

 _We got up in the wild part of the Cascades, and then Mabel took the turn onto the Valley Road. Before long she stopped. Before us reared the split cliffs where once I had fought Gideon inside a giant robot on railroad tracks that were no longer there. Now an ironwork frame approximated the shape of the trestle, and it bore great big letters that spelled out "WELCOME TO GRAVITY FALLS."_

 _I was glad to see they had fixed the spelling._

* * *

They went straight to Grunkle Stan's new house on Gopher Road, piled out, and Stan made them take the mandatory tour—though Wendy had seen it before. Mabel darted everywhere, oohing and aahing. She looked out the window of the master bedroom and crowed, "I can see the Shack from here!" True, it was only a little corner of the roof, but there it was, a short uphill walk away.

They admired the upstairs, homey and welcoming even though Stan and Sheila had just moved in, and then Stan showed them the downstairs, where he had his man-cave, with a TV nook, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf of tomes like _Winning Ways at Poker, The Great Con Artists and Their Scams,_ and _Colombian Prison Escapes._ He also had a pool table, and he and Mabel shot a round while Sheila showed Dipper and Wendy the rest of the house.

"You're eating with us," she said firmly as they looked at the large, well-equipped, and mouth-wateringly aromatic kitchen. "We'll have dinner at seven, and that gives you kids plenty of time to move your stuff into the Shack. I've made a nice New England pot roast."

"Thanks," Dipper said. "Mabel will be glad to hear that!"

Even upstairs, they could hear the clack of the billiard balls and Mabel's shouts of joy or anger as she made or missed a shot. "We may have to drag her and Stan up the stairs for dinner," Wendy warned.

While Sheila fussed with the cooking—she turned down their offer of help, saying, "No, I never get a chance to do this, and I love it!"—Dipper and Wendy went outside. The lawn was coming along nicely. Dipper tilted his head and grinned. Somewhere not far away a woodpecker was playing a rapid-fire drum solo. It was like another way of being welcomed back.

Wendy took some time to call her dad and tell her they had safely arrived. "Yeah, yeah, I'll be home in, like, an hour," she told him. "Dad, I don't _know_ what's for dinner! I'll cook something when I get there! What're you guys in the mood for? Yeah, chili sounds good. Check and make sure we have onions, and call me if I need to stop and get some. Oh, and thaw out some venison for me, OK? Two pounds should be enough. Love you, Dad."

She shrugged as she put away her phone. "Looks like I gotta go. The Corduroy men are on the verge of starvation. Hey, Dip, walk me up to the Shack? I left my car there before Stan and I flew down."

They went through the pines, along a little footpath that already showed signs of traffic. "I'll see you tomorrow," Wendy promised as they walked as slowly as possible. "We'll run, OK? How about seven? I'll cook breakfast for Dad and the boys, but I'll eat with you guys in the Shack."

"Sounds great," Dipper said. "Like old times."

"Yeah, bring me my trapper's hat," she said. "We'll do the traditional cootie exchange!"

They were halfway to the Shack, concealed on every side by the pines. He stopped her. "Come here, you."

He held her tight, her breasts pressing softly against his chest, and kissed her hard. She practically purred, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Missed that," she said, smiling, as they broke apart. "Man, look at you. You've caught up to me, Dip!"

"Nah," he said, looking into her green, green eyes. "I'm still about an inch shorter. But I think I've still got a little bit of growing to do. You know, Mabel's still a tiny bit taller than I am?"

Wendy chuckled. "And she never lets you forget it."

"Mm-mm. Hey, Wen, I need a refill."

Holding each other like that, with their telepathic communication flashing not only thoughts but feelings back and forth, Dipper and Wendy both became aware of how strong, how sharp their desire for each other had grown. Stronger even than back in April, when Dipper had been Wendy's date to her Senior Prom, where she had made him so proud by telling everyone that, dork though he might be, "He's _my_ dork!"

And man, she had kissed him right there in public.

And then after the prom, they had driven up to Lookout Point to nuzzle and hug and cuddle—

"I was thinkin' of the Point as we drove up, too," Wendy said.

"Maybe we can take a trip up there soon," Dipper said.

"Any time, man." She took a deep breath. "I am so ready. Hey," she whispered, "we still gonna keep our vow?"

After a pause while he wrestled with his conscience, Dipper sighed. "Yeah. I mean, I feel—you know—ready right now! But yeah, until I'm eighteen and don't need Mom and Dad's permission to say we're in love and I'm going to marry you—yeah. Just a year and three months now. I mean—"

"I know," she said softly. "We've come this far. It'd be like walkin' off the track at the seventy-fifth meter mark, huh?"

Dipper nodded. "But we can, you know—"

"Mental make-out, yeah," Wendy agreed. "I want a good session with you. Clear away the blues, man! Get us in good spirits for the summer, right? Tomorrow night, OK?"

"If I can hold out."

She held his face in both hands and kissed him again, her lips soft and warm. No peppermint, but some things taste better unseasoned. Then she murmured, "One thing, though, before we fool around mentally. I want to get physical first. Just you and me, no Mabel or anybody around."

"What—what are you suggesting?" Dipper asked.

She caressed his cheek. "Dipper, now that I'm Manager at the Shack, I'm runnin' all over the place all day long. It gets to me. Now, tomorrow night, when we're alone, the very first thing I want is to feel your hands on me."

"Y-yeah?"

"Yeah," she said with a sigh. "I mean, dude, I keep dreaming of those wonderful foot massages you give!"


	3. Chapter 3

**Sixteen and Summer!**

 **(May-June 2016)**

* * *

 **3: Of Frustration and Frog**

That Sunday evening, after some hesitation, Mabel opted to stay in the Mystery Shack rather than Grunkle Stan's and Graunty Sheila's place. "I'm just used to it," she explained. "And when I have sleepovers, Dipper can come over here to get away from it all. He doesn't like fun."

"I don't like being kept awake until four A.M. or else having to sleep down in Grunkle Ford's lab," Dipper countered.

"Yeah, good point there, kiddo," Stan agreed. "When you lose sleep, you get all cranky and weird, and you go to sleep down in Ford's 'lab' (his hooked fingers drew air quotes over the word), you might wake up on freakin' Mars!"

"But you're welcome here any time," Sheila added, smiling. "Don't even bother to call. Just walk in and make yourself at home."

"Hah! Family!" Stan said, giving Sheila peck on the cheek.

Mabel drove Helen Wheels up to the Shack and Dipper, adhering to the letter of the law, walked up the hill and met her there as she popped the trunk and Soos came out beaming to greet them. Soos helped them move their stuff into the Shack, cheerful as ever: "It'll be like, old times, dawgs! Watch out there, Soosie!"

Little Soos, now running everywhere on his chubby little legs, wound in and out as his dad hauled a footlocker to Mabel's room, the downstairs guest room partly under the attic. As soon as Mabel's own hands were free, she swept Little Soos up and spun him until he giggled. "Mabel!" he shouted joyously. "Wuv Mabel!"

Five trips upstairs, down, and up again, and Dipper had his junk in the old attic bedroom. He drew a deep breath. Up here the joists had never lost their balsam scent. It mingled with dust and memories. Echoing the end of one of his favorite fantasy books, he murmured, "Well, I'm back."

It felt good. That night he slept well and his dreams were sweet and warm.

* * *

Monday morning came, and he and Wendy ran their nature trail, her long legs flashing as she moved with antelope grace, his body in perfect step with hers, the two of them feeling life pumping in their veins, drawing in clean mountain air, running a few steps apart but together all the same. They ran so hard that at Moon Trap Pond they paused for a few moments. Ever since the time they had nearly been absorbed into the pond by Numina, the naiad-spirit that commanded the waters of the enchanted pool, they had carefully avoided the place.

But now, feeling bolder than usual, they stood on the edge of the perfectly round Moon Trap Pond, its water smooth and as mirror-like as ever. And they held hands.

— _That was how we got this gift of telepathy._

 _Yeah, Dip. Remember how hard it was when we could hear each other's every thought, all the time, like 24-7?_

— _I loved that in a way, but it would've driven us crazy. This is better. We can touch and turn it on or off. We ought to thank Numina._ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a penny. "Numina!" he called. "We just wanted to say hello again. And thanks."

He flipped the coin spinning in a high arc, flashing dark and copper, and it landed ten feet from the bank. It rested on the surface as though it had landed on blueberry Jell-O—the pond had strange properties—and after a moment, it sank with a soft gurgle.

 _What does that mean?_

— _I'm not sure, Wen, but I think she accepts our thanks._

She playfully hip-bumped him. _Don't get lazy on me, man. Come on. Gotta get a move on. We can't slack off like this on every run!_

— _Right with you, Magic Girl!_

And though they got back to the Shack early, only 7:50, Mabel was up and out, riding Waddles around the yard while beside her lumbered Widdles, Waddles's daughter, now very nearly his size (Hog, XL). All three seemed happy. "Hey!" Mabel called. "Guess what? Soos says that Gompers's kid is the cutest little geep you ever saw. Can I go up to your Aunt Sallie's and visit them?"

"Any time, Mabes," Wendy said. "She's probably out feeding the stock right now, so I'll call her in about an hour and see if it's all right for you to drive up today. I'm sure she'll say yes, unless she's got shopping to do."

"Yay! Geep!" Mabel cheered. The pigs grunted happily.

Dipper and Wendy exchanged headgear—he returning her trapper's hat, she plopping his pine-tree cap on his head—and a kiss. "Welcome home, dork," she murmured. "Now you're my Big Dipper again!"

"Glad to be back, Lumberjack Girl."

He kissed her, or she kissed him. It's hard to say whose idea it was, but they both thought it was an excellent one.

And their day at the Shack began.

The evening before, Dipper had learned that Soos's Abuelita would be away for a couple of months—her grand-daughter Luisa was about to have her first baby down in Mexico, and Abuelita was staying with her and her husband, helping out until the baby arrived and Luisa was back home, settled, and able to take care of the house again.

With Abuelita not available to cook, Dipper and Wendy took over breakfast duties, working up a hearty meal of scrambled eggs with cheese, turkey sausage, home fries, and—Dipper's surprise for Wendy—hot biscuits, made from scratch.

"Didn't know you'd taken up baking," Wendy said as they cooked.

"Well, yeah, I figured if we go camping I can make up some of these. I know how to cook them in the embers of a campfire. These are Southern style."

"Well, hush my mouth!" Mabel said, bopping into the kitchen and washing her hands at the sink.

"That," Dipper said, dishing up eggs as the Ramirezes came into the dining room, "is impossible."

At a few minutes before opening time at nine, Wendy called her aunt, who chuckled and immediately invited Mabel to come up for a visit.

Teek O'Grady wasn't on duty until eleven—he was still the short-order cook—but he showed up early anyway. Mabel squealed and jumped him, giving him a tight hug and a smacking kiss. "Hey," she said, "Wanna drive up to see a geep with me? About an hour of driving up and then back, so we can spend half an hour or forty-five minutes there and I'll still get you back in time to cook the burgers!"

"Well—that's cutting it pretty close," Teek said. He had let his hair grow longer, and, allergy season now past, he was wearing his contacts again. Teek was growing into a handsome young man.

"Then we better start now!" Mabel dragged him outside.

Dipper looked out the window in the gift-shop door to make sure Mabel wasn't going to drive—though Teek could, under Oregon law, drive with a teen passenger, Mabel technically wasn't permitted to until the twins' next birthday. But Teek got into the driver's seat of Helen Wheels, so he relaxed.

Soos, in his full Mr. Mystery garb, complete with eyepatch, opened the museum door for the first few tourists. "Won't be a rush today," Wendy said. "Maybe fifty, sixty customers is all. The crunch time begins in early June."

As it turned out, they had closer to a hundred, but anyway, they made out fine, with Dipper managing sales at a single cash register and Wendy helping customers decide on purchases, doing museum walk-throughs, and so on. Just before eleven, Teek and Mabel came back. "Just in time," Dipper said. "Mabel, take the snack-bar register."

"OK," she said, her voice flat.

He glanced at her. "What's wrong?"

She wouldn't meet his gaze. "Nothing."

Dipper noticed that Teek's face was red, but—well, they were about to go into the lunch rush, so he put off asking any questions.

But he mentioned it to Wendy, and that evening at six as they closed up shop—Teek had stayed until four, cleaning up the kitchen, but then had driven home without saying goodbye to anybody—Wendy took Mabel out for a walk. They came back in half an hour.

"What's up?" Dipper asked.

Wendy shook her head. "Lover's spat, I guess. May be serious, may be just a bump in the road. But I'll have to let Mabel tell you about it when she gets around to it. It's her worry, and she doesn't want to tell you yet. Just, you know—be supportive."

"I hate being in the dark," he complained. Mabel could be frustrating in a hundred different assorted ways.

After work, he went home with Wendy, where again he and Wendy cooked, this time for the Corduroy men. Well, OK, her younger brothers were only fourteen, but they'd hit their lumberjack growth spurt and were almost as tall as Dipper. And they had gargantuan, man-sized appetites.

But not epicurean tastes, so they happily settled for venison steaks, enormous baked potatoes, green beans with almonds, and fresh sourdough biscuits—Wendy had the edge on Dipper there, but she showed him how to make them. They didn't wait for table service, but grabbed plates and over-filled them straight off the stove.

From the standpoint of noise, eating with the Corduroy boys was a bit like picnicking in a sawmill. Mabel could be a loud eater, eagerly nom-nomming her way through three courses, but Dan and his sons made dinner a symphony of mastication. And they all drifted away right after eating, leaving the washing-up to Wendy and Dipper.

"I thought they were helping nowadays," Dipper said.

Wendy, drying, shrugged. "Meh, they usually do, but when I have a guest over, they figure it's our turn." They finished up at seven-thirty and then Wendy told her dad, "Me and Dip are goin' into town to see a movie."

"OK," Dan said. He had settled in front of the TV, tuned to a Japanese sumo match on the satellite receiver. "Haw! Look at them fat boys!"

Wendy drove them to Gravity Malls, where the quadruplex was playing a new Johnny Depp movie. "I hope Mabel's going to snap out of her funk," Dipper said as they stood in line for tickets.

"Mm, you know Mabes. She's an optimist, she'll get through it, but she'll have to talk to you about it," Wendy said. "Oh, boo, there's the frog."

Dipper blinked. "Frog?"

"Plague of frog, remember? Like, singular? There it is up ahead—see, it's talking to those girls."

"Oh, yeah, looks like a green fr—wait, what? _Talking_?"

"Just wait. He'll hit on me, and you'll see," Wendy said.

The three girls, teens, were giggling and shaking their heads. The frog—it was undoubtedly a real frog, no more than four inches long if that—sat on its haunches, but strained upward, toward the girls, and gesticulated with its, um, not hand, exactly, but right forefoot? And it certainly looked like it was talking.

After a minute, it hunkered down, looking disappointed, then looked up, sweeping its gaze over the others in line. Ahead of Dipper and Wendy stood some guys and two older couples. The frog seemed to notice Wendy and hopped in their direction. "Here he comes," Wendy said. "Don't step on him or anything, Dip. Best to ignore him if you can."

Dipper heard the soft, squishy plops as the frog approached. Three feet away, it sat, strained upward, and said in a high-pitched voice, "Greetings once more, fair Queen of the sunset-colored hair! Hast changed thy mind? Wouldst vouchsafe me one single kiss?"

"Hi, frog," Wendy said. "Look, I already told you, being prom queen doesn't count. No royal blood in me. And for the tenth time, no, I'm not gonna kiss you."

"Alas, my heart shall shatter," the frog mourned, with a dramatic gesture. It raised both, well, call them hands, the little fingers spread in supplication. "Reconsider, fair one! The enchantment that doth bind me must be shattered with a princess' maidenly kiss!"

"Don't you have a puppet show to host?" Dipper asked, not nastily. It wasn't a green frog—they're native to areas east of the Mississippi—nor a bullfrog, also not native to Oregon, but an invasive species happily settling there. It was, he decided, a northern leopard frog, a species that seemed to earn its keep by furnishing specimens for high-school biology students to dissect. Of course, that killed them, but it's a living.

"Mock'st thou me?" the frog asked with what probably it intended to be a challenging glare, though it looked as if he was staring at a potential meal of dragonfly. "Woe, that I have so fallen in the world's fair regard as to be belabored by a stripling such as thou! Varlet, had I mine own proper form and true shape, thou should'st pay dearly for such a gibe!"

Dipper said, "Come on, man. You are a frog."

"I have the outward semblance of a frog, but inside I am pure one hundred per cent prince, FDA certified!"

"Look, you can't be a prince," Dipper said.

"Dipper, don't engage him," Wendy warned.

"Thou hurl'st a lie in my teeth, thou low-born churl? Oh, thou shalt rue the day! Why dost thou falsely and foully say that I be not what I say I be?"

"To begin with, there's the matter of mass," Dipper said. "What do you weigh? Three ounces at the most? A prince would have to weigh in at a hundred and fifty pounds at least. That's . . . let me see . . . like eight hundred times your size. If you turned into a three-ounce prince, nobody would pay any attention to you."

"Would, too!"

"No, I don't think so," Dipper said. They had shuffled forward as the line moved—well, the frog hopped—and they had reached the window. Dipper bent and said to the ticket clerk, "Two, please, for _Looking Glass."_

"Three!" the frog yelled.

"Warned you," Wendy said.

The clerk hesitated. "Did you say two or—"

"Don't listen to the frog. Two!" Dipper insisted.

"I'll wait for you here!" the frog threatened. "This isn't over!"

"Plague of frog," Dipper said. "I'm starting to see it."

"Yeah, if you talk to him, he latches onto you like a leech. He might hang around for days, arguing with you."

"He's not really a prince," Dipper said. "Can't be."

"Nope. Least, the girls that kissed him didn't transform him. Just got cases of slimy lips, is all. My opinion, he's just a sexual harasser."

"Has anybody, uh—stepped on him?"

"Does no good, man. He just flattens out and then pops back into shape."

"Sounds like a case for Grunkle Ford."

They stopped at the concessions counter, bought some popcorn, and filed into the auditorium. The movie wasn't great—but they sat in the dark corner of the theater that kids called the Passion Pit, so . . . they really didn't mind.

Wendy reminded Dipper of something, and before the movie even ended they slipped out to her car.

She had the stuff with her. Oil and a towel and everything. Lookout Point wasn't crowded—it was a Monday evening, after all—under no moon but a sky full of stars, Dipper held her feet and gave her the best foot rub he could muster. She kept curling her long toes and moaning. She called it a footgasm, and he felt something of her pleasure through their skin-to-skin contact. "I'm gonna keep you around," she sighed at last. "Nobody else ever does that for me!"

"Any time," he said.

"Mm." She pulled her socks back on and sat up, reaching to hug him. "Let me pay you back, Big Dipper."

"Mm," he agreed.

And a happy Dipper put off the problems of the frog and Mabel's romantic troubles until the next day.


	4. Chapter 4

**Sixteen and Summer!**

 **(May-June 2016)**

* * *

 **4: Schemes, Dreams, and Screams**

That Monday night, a tired Dipper turned in around 10:30, ready for another sound sleep. He'd need it, because he and Wendy were due to do their run again Tuesday morning, and Wendy had warned they'd not be taking a breather this time. Four good miles, into and around town, and they'd do it, she said, at a personal-best speed.

Dipper would have hated that if it came from Coach Jorgenson. Coming from Wendy—well, it was almost flirtatious! He looked forward to it.

A few minutes passed, but he had not yet gone to sleep when the door creaked open, leaking dim light into the attic, and he heard Mabel: "Dipper? Brobro?"

"Yeah?" he asked, sitting up in bed. "What is it, Mabel?" He could barely make her out, standing there backlit by the single dim light over the stair.

She came inside and closed the door behind her. "Sleepover?"

"Uh—sure, I guess. Your bed may be dusty, though."

"I don't care. Turn on the lantern?"

Dipper switched on the battery-powered lantern. Its light shone yellow and feeble. He'd have to replace the batteries. However, it gave enough deep-shadowed illumination for Mabel to find her way to the other, unused bed. He saw that she clutched some bedding and that she was in her old sleep shirt, faded very pale now, over shorty pajamas.

She turned down the coverlet, sneezed, and then tossed her pillow and blanket onto the bed. "Just the quilt is dusty. I'll be all right with these," she said.

"What's wrong?" Dipper asked.

She got into bed, but sat with her pillow against the wall and against her back, her legs bent, hugging her knees. "It's Teek! I want to talk it out."

"O-kay," Dipper said slowly. "You settled now? Can I switch—"

"Yeah, turn off the light. Looks like you need new batteries."

"I was just thinking that." He clicked the lantern off. "What did Teek do?"

"Something incredibly dumb!" Mabel said in the dark, her anger so intense that it was a wonder she didn't glow a dull red. "I can't believe it!"

Dipper settled in with a sigh. This was going to be a long session, he could tell. He asked, "What exactly did he do?"

Her voice a challenge, Mabel shot back: "Have you ever heard of GACAFS?"

"Uh, no. Gackaffs?"

She gave one bitter bark of a laugh. " _Gack_ is right!"

"Mabel, what is it?"

This time she spelled the acronym out, then said, "Georgia College of Arts and Film Studies."

Dipper shrugged invisibly in the dark. "Never heard of it."

Her voice disgruntled, Mabel said, "Yeah, well, that's 'cause it's in freakin' _Atlanta_!"

"Um. OK."

He heard bed springs creaking and knew his sister was waving her arms in the dark, the way she did when agitated. "And stupid Teek made a stupid student film and entered it in a stupid contest, and now he's won a stupid scholarship to that stupid college! And he didn't even _tell_ me! And now he's going to be three thousand miles away for four whole damn years! I'm so _mad_ at him!"

"Whoa, whoa," Dipper said. "Hang on and slow down. Doesn't Teek want to be a film maker?"

Mabel's rage did not simmer down. "That's beside the point, Dip! He's just thinking of himself! What about me, Mabel? Huh? I was—" she broke off, and he heard her sobbing. Then the patter of her bare feet on the floor. She said, "Move over" in a soggy voice.

"It's not really big enough for two, but—" he scooted over as far as he could until he was in the corner, his back in the angle of the wall.

She sat in the middle of the bed, on top of the covers, and moved to lean against him. "I wa-was counting on him to go to college in California. I mean, I-I'm going to Olmsted, I'll be in the same t-town as you and Wendy, and I thought at most Teek'd be in LA. I mean, OK, Hollywood's nearly as far off from Olmsted College of Art and Design as Gravity Falls is from Piedmont, but at least that's drivable. I could drive to him, or he could drive up to me, on long we-weekends and holidays and junk. B-but if he's three thousand miles away in Atlanta—I'll _never_ see him!"

"Calm down," Dipper said, rubbing her back. "Hey, come on, during most of the year, we're in Piedmont and he's in Gravity Falls and you don't get to see him face to face. This won't be all that different. You can still face-time and all, the way you do now. And you guys can always get together in the summers or over the holidays—"

"While you and Wendy are _living_ together!" Mabel wailed. "I'll be shut out! I'll feel like a third wheel!"

"Sh—shh," Dipper said. "Wendy and I wouldn't do that. Come on, it's really not as bad as you think. Six hundred miles, a couple of thousand miles—and there's airplane service, I'm pretty sure. And when Teek graduates, he'll probably come back to LA for work. And you'll be an artist, you can work anywhere."

"Don't be so damn _reasonable_!" Mabel said, shoving at him. "And don't take Teek's side! Dipper, I _can't_ let him go."

"Mabel," Dipper coaxed, "come on. Think about it from his point of view. Teek's folks don't have a whole lot of money. A scholarship—"

"A _full_ freakin' scholarship!" Mabel insisted. "What were those damn Confederates _thinking_? Didn't they consider _my_ feelings?"

"Well, they probably don't even know about you. Anyway, I'm kind of surprised a film school's even in Atlanta," Dipper said.

"Oh, Teek told me all about that! There's so much film production out of there now—there's like four or five movie studios in full-time operation! The _Revengers_ movies are shot there, and the _Anger Games_ , and _The Stalking Dead._ You know what they call Atlanta now? Ya'llywood!"

"I never heard that—" Dipper began.

Mabel cut him off, sounding as vindictive as General Sherman marching his way to the sea: _"_ One of the Georgia state universities out there set up a special college for art design for film and film writing, directing, and production and all!"

"Art? You could go there, then," Dipper said. "You and Teek could go to the same—"

"I don't _want_ to design art for the damn movies," Mabel grumbled. "It's not my style. Anyway," she added accusingly, "I'd never go off and leave _you_ like that. Come on, Dip, you've got to help me come up with some scheme to keep Teek from going all the way to Atlanta for college! We gotta persuade him to go to a California college, or at least an Oregon one! Maybe I could break my leg or something—"

"That's a no," Dipper said. "You know better than that."

More hopefully, Mabel said, "Maybe I can talk him into our getting married this summer. Then he can't just pack up and leave his wife!"

"Don't think Mom would consent," Dipper said. "Wait, is he a senior this year? I thought—"

"No, just finished his junior year. Still a year of high school to go. He's like Wendy, a little older than us because of his birthday coming in spring. But a year from this coming September, he'll be off there in Georgia with all those Southern belles, and I'll be here—unless you help me!"

"Well—a lot can happen in a year," Dipper said. "But if you're thinking of something silly, don't do it."

"Like what?" she asked.

He didn't want to say it. "You know what."

"No, what?"

Dipper clenched his jaw. "Well—like sleeping with him and getting pregnant."

"Hmm," Mabel said. "That's an idea."

"A _BAD_ idea!" Dipper yipped. "Come on, that's not you!"

"But then Mom and Dad would have to let us get married—"

"Mabel, this is me. Dipper. Brobro. Get that out of your head. You don't want to do that to yourself, or to him. How would it be to start out by making it impossible for him to go to the school he chose? He'd resent you and maybe the baby, too! Lots of girls have thought of that, but it never works out. Never. Please. Promise me you won't do that."

He heard her take a deep, deep breath. "I promise," she said, sounding weary. "But help me think of some good scheme to change his mind. Or if not that, at least some good reasons. Couldn't we help him with money if he went to college in California?"

"I guess we could," Dipper said. "But I don't think he'd accept that."

"What am I going to do?" she asked, and the sobs came again.

* * *

At the same time, but six hundred miles away in Piedmont—

Billy Sheaffer had frequent weird dreams at the best of times: dreams of flying, dreams of playing tricks on people—not letting the air out of a tire or putting pennies under a door so the person inside couldn't open it, not pranks, but doing magic. Turning people to stone. Setting a whole town on fire. Stuff like that.

He always felt deep regret and remorse when he did bad things. But in the dreams, somehow he could not help himself, could not stop doing them. He hated the visions.

They were never coherent, those dreams, just flashes. They often woke him up and made him feel worried and uneasy. He didn't want to hurt people. He did not know why, in the dreams, he so often did.

Part of it, he had decided, came from the teasing he had suffered when he was much younger. Even before that, beyond the far boundary of memory.

He couldn't recall it, but his adoptive parents had told him that when he was very young, not long after he came to them, he had to have a series of operations to prepare him for his artificial eye.

His mom and dad hadn't preserved any of the medical photos of his bruised, stitched face in the aftermath of those operations. They had them, but they had locked them away so Billy would never see them. Though the injuries had been inflicted to help him, they looked horrific.

However, what with his parents' hiding the photos away, he had never seen pictures of himself as a baby fresh from a medical procedure, looking like an infant Frankenstein's monster. Still, he knew about what had been done, and he had his imagination.

And later, in pre-school, the kids had teased him about his eye patch. Sometimes they had pestered him to show them what was under it. If he did, they screamed and ran away, because the eye socket shone pink and wrinkled and weird. He could remember being fitted with his artificial eye. The first one was awful, dead-looking, just a form for his face to get accustomed to.

The others got better and better, and by first grade, you could hardly tell the difference between the real eye and the prosthetic. His parents moved and he went to a new school. The kids stopped teasing him about his eye because they stopped noticing it.

But he remembered all those little ones his eye had fascinated and terrified. Oh, he remembered.

And in his dreams, sometimes threats to his single eye came from nowhere: scalpels coming closer, looming in his terrified vision, and he unable to close his eye as the sharp gleaming point came so close it blurred before making its plunge—or at times he dreamed of someone spraying paint in his eye, feeling like liquid flame.

In his waking hours, sometimes a little thing happened—soap in his eye in the shower—that scared him. What if he lost the vision in that one eye? What then?

Alone in the dark, forever. He dreaded darkness with all his heart, dreaded loneliness even more.

And sometimes he had dreams of a consuming fire. The door had locked itself, and he couldn't get out, and the hungry licking flames rose up from the base of every wall—

When he woke up shaking and wet with sweat, he would sometimes ask the darkness, "What did I do? Why are you doing this to me?"

The night never answered.

Anyway.

On that particular early summer night, the one dividing the next-to-last from the last day of May, Billy Sheaffer twitched and moaned as he dreamed about his best friend, Dipper Pines, very nearly his older brother in everything but blood. He looked up to Dipper, admired him, and most important—

He trusted Dipper.

In the dream, somehow Billy had been transported from home to Gravity Falls, as the Pineses had promised. He had no recollection of having ridden in a car, though, or of any point between Piedmont and central Oregon.

He had never been to Oregon, not in the flesh.

He had seen Mabel's photos of Gravity Falls—nothing scenic, no landscapes, and nothing that he could call magical or mystical—but the pictures featured Dipper and Mabel and some of their friends, most often near the Mystery Shack, which he glimpsed in the background.

And he could see a little of the green forest and the peaceful hills and cliffs beyond. Now his dreams reshaped the countryside and painted it in nightmare colors.

The rounded hills grew sharp and conical, gigantic fangs projecting from the Earth. The trees, green in all the photos, shading to hazy purple in the far distances, became twisted and glowed the lurid color of fire, like flames arrested in motion. The blue sky in the photographs became a hellish orange-red, adrift with black shapes like cinders and ash, and a jagged X split it.

And the air filled with the stench of sulfur and burned flesh, and the earth became barren and fissured.

"You'll like it here," Dipper said cheerfully—somehow Dipper was there—as he and Billy sat on the roof of the Mystery Shack, their legs hanging over the edge, kicking their heels.

"I don't," Billy had protested. "It's awful."

"Get used to it, kid," Dipper had said, laughing. "Chaos is like air to you."

"What?"

Dipper laughed. "Hey! Billy, look at Wendy down there!"

On the ground, Wendy was struggling to reach the Shack, lurching and staggering and nearly falling. She saw them and screamed, "Dipper, help me! Something terrible is happening—"

And her body broke up into moving dots that streamed away. She shrank into a living puddle the way the wicked witch dissolved in _The Wizard of Oz,_ melting, melting—no, not melting, but breaking down into a loathsome pile of roaches! One yellow-tinged eye remained, a detached eyeball staring up at Dipper and Billy in reproach and despair.

"That really bugged her, huh?" Dipper said. He giggled.

The changed world swirled all around Billy, like a tornado shaped from vertigo. "Dipper, I don't like this! I want to go home!"

"Now, why would you want to do that? This place is so much more fun! And you can have it all for yourself. You can check in anytime. Only catch is, you can't ever leave!"

Billy thought his heart would burst. "No, I don't want to!"

"Come on, Billy. Would I lie to you?"

Dipper stood up and held out his hand. Thinking that he was going to help him up, Billy reached out and grasped it.

But in a sing-song, Dipper said, "Then it's a _de-al!_ " A flash of blue fire erupted from their joined hands.

Something golden streaked down Dipper's arm, _on the inside,_ under the skin. It passed with an electric shock into Billy's hand, then up his arm and down into his chest, burrowing into his heart.

Dipper froze, an insane grin on his face.

The grin split, flesh peeling back. His eyes fell in. His skin crusted into horrible greenish-gray, dripping ooze, and then crumbled and flaked away on a hot sulfuric wind. Dipper's very skeleton broke apart, and the bones dropped to the roof of the Shack and then pattered down to the ground.

And inside Billy's heart, that spark, whatever it was, laughed insanely— _Ah-hah-hah-hah!_ And a familiar voice he didn't recognize shouted, "You're mine now!"

* * *

Billy woke up screaming. He was soaked. Not just sweat, he had wet the bed for the first time since—well, since he could remember.

The door opened and his mom and dad came in, turning on the light. "What's wrong, son?"

"Don't let him get me!" Billy begged, fighting the tangled sheets and struggling to speak through wrenching sobs.

His mother embraced him. "You're safe—oh, Billy—we'll have to change your bed. Quick, get the bedclothes off."

His dad yanked them off into a heap on the floor. "Looks like the pad caught it. Mattress is OK. What happened, son?" His dad's big cool hand pressed on his forehead. "Are you sick?"

"I don't want it to happen," Billy said.

"You're safe now," his mother said again. "It was a dream, Billy. Come on, let's go to the bathroom and you get out of those pajamas and shower off."

His sisters waited on the landing, eyes wide. "What happened?" they asked in unison.

"Bad nightmare," their mom said. "Go back to bed. Billy will be all right."

By the time he had cleaned himself up and changed to dry clothes, his dad had made up the bed again. But Mr. Sheaffer said, "Hon? Would it be OK if just for tonight-?"

"Want to sleep in our bed tonight?" his mom asked.

Ashamed of himself, Billy nodded. He couldn't speak because of the hard lump in his throat.

"Come on, then. You'll feel better in the morning."

Later, snuggled warm between his parents, Billy tried not to go back to sleep.

He was afraid of dreaming again about Gravity Falls, about seeing his friend Dipper die, about seeing Dipper's friend Wendy being transformed into horrible bugs, about seeing the sky tear itself apart and the earth catch fire.

About its all somehow being his fault.

He dreaded sleep because he dreaded the dream.

And he dreaded the dream all the more because in some fearsome way—

He _liked_ it.

* * *

 _To be continued_


	5. Chapter 5

**Sixteen and Summer!**

 **(May-June 2016)**

* * *

 **5: Rainy Days and Tuesdays**

Tuesday, the last day in May, dawned wet, but Dipper and Wendy ran anyway, in a rain that was not quite a drizzle but a little more than a fog. And in its damp coolness they ran hard, downtown, around the periphery of Gravity Falls, looping back to Circle Park and around it, then over to the water tower and around the edge of its lot, then back up the long uphill pull to the Shack. They kept a constant speed, never pausing or slowing.

As they neared the driveway, the dark clouds lowered and the misting rain became a light, steady, cold shower. Wendy paused in the parking lot at her car to grab the duffle with her clothes in it, and in that little moment the rain speared down hard, and they both ran, laughing, for the shelter of the Shack.

"Whoosh!" Wendy said as they ended on the gift-shop porch, both of them dripping. She dropped the duffle with a thump, arched her back, reached up, elbows bent, and pushed her sopping hair back from her face. "I have to wash my hair now. And dry it. Lucky it's not down to my ankles these days."

Dipper couldn't take his eyes off her. The rain had soaked her gray Gravity Falls High tank top—and from the looks of it, the sports bra beneath—and the shirt clung tight to her curves. He blinked and mumbled, "Umm—what?"

She laughed and lightly punched his arm. "C'mon, Dip! You've seen boobs before! I'm freezing, so let's go in. I'll take the downstairs shower, you go up to the attic."

"Uh, I always do," he said, opening the door for her.

"Yeah, but I know what you were thinkin'," she said in a low teasing voice. "It'd be warmer with two in the shower! Hey, look at the clock. We made great time this morning. We can have breakfast on before eight. Scoot upstairs now and shower."

Dipper did as she suggested, but it didn't help that he had slipped back into a memory of the one time he and Wendy had shared a shower—it hadn't been all that romantic, really, because both of them had come close to drowning in the Pacific and were just getting over hypothermia, but they had clung to each other, skin to skin.

It would be nice to have a replay of that moment when neither of them was recuperating from a serious medical condition.

The memory made the hot, steamy shower difficult for him, but he got things under control, lathered, rinsed, dried, and dressed, and as he came down the stairs, he heard the hair dryer going in the downstairs bathroom. He tapped on the door, and Wendy opened it a crack. "Yeah?"

"What should I start?" he whispered.

She kept her own voice soft: "Mm. How 'bout pancakes? Use the buttermilk from the top shelf of the fridge, toward the back. And maybe some bacon. There's fresh fruit, too, oranges and strawberries and bananas, to top 'em with. You mix up the basic batter, and I'll be there in a sec."

As Dipper beat the mixture of flour, melted butter, eggs, and buttermilk, Wendy came in, looking fresh and happy. She teased him a little about his slicked-back hair—"What would Abuelita say?"—but he told her he'd dry it after they ate, and they got the breakfast on at seven-forty-eight, as she had predicted. Wendy had found some pecans, gave them a quick toast, chopped them, and added them and a little cinnamon and sugar to the pancake batter. Dipper peeled, seeded, and sectioned oranges, chopped bananas, and added strawberries to make the fruit topping.

Then Melody came in with Harmony and Little Soos, and she helped set the table and brew the coffee. Soos showed up, stretching and yawning. "Smells great, dudes! Hey, guess what, Abuelita called me last night at like one o'clock in the morning. Luisa has a little boy they're gonna name Domingo! That makes me, like, a great-cousin or a great-uncle or some deal like that! Hah! That would be cool, dawgs. Grunkle Soos!"

"Congratulations, man!" Dipper said, high-fiving Soos.

"Mama and baby are doing, like, _¡Bueno!"_ Soos announced happily, exposing his buck teeth in a huge smile. "C'mere, Buffly!" That was his pet name for his daughter Harmony, who always laughed with pleasure when she saw a butterfly, even if it were only on TV. He swept her up and gave her a smacking kiss and a fit of laughter.

Mabel was the last to report to breakfast, dragging in dressed in one of her most downbeat sweaters, a dusty lavender with a gray and blue appliqué of a drippy raincloud on it, and looking exhausted, with deep circles under her eyes. But the Ramirez kids always perked her up. "Hi, baby!" she said, making Harmony coo. "Gimme a hug, Soosie!"

Still, Dipper could tell that her heart wasn't wholly in her cheery-sounding greetings. Worse, she had only one helping of pancakes and fruit, drank only half a cup of coffee, and she didn't finish even one strip of turkey bacon. "Come on, Sis," he said when Melody and Soos had left the kitchen. "This'll work itself out. Just don't have a blow-up with Teek, OK?"

"I better go somewheres, then," Mabel muttered. "The way I feel now, well, I gotta wind down again before I talk to him."

"Got an idea, Mabes," said Wendy. "You just gotta drive careful—and slow on the curves in this wet weather!"

At her suggestion, Mabel decided to drive up to Aunt Sallie's place. Sallie could always use some help this time of year, and Mabel liked her, adored her animals (Sallie's chickens came close to worshiping Mabel), and was willing to offer her services, so that was decided, and Mabel set off right after the breakfast clean-up. Melody came back just as Mabel left and insisted on loading the dishwasher herself—"You two have done plenty already!"

At nine o'clock sharp, Soos opened the Shack for another day's business and then went back to the master bedroom to get into his Mr. Mystery costume. Dipper and Wendy took their places at the cash register and in the gift shop. "You sore from the run?" Wendy asked, leaning on the counter as he got on the stool.

"No," Dipper said. "I'm OK, just kinda sleepy. Wendy? Hey, I'm sorry for—you know—looking at you that way when you were wet. It's just been too long since we've been together."

"It's OK, dude, really," Wendy said quietly. "Hey, you think I don't fantasize about bein' with you sometimes? Tell you what—move night this week, let's hold hands and exchange our steamy fantasies!"

"Don't . . . know if I could take that," Dipper admitted. "But also, whenever we get some private time, let's talk about Mabel and Teek. I don't want either of them to do something really dumb and, you know, ruin things."

"Yeah," Wendy sighed. "Man, it's rough trying to teach these younger teens a few facts of life, isn't it?"

That made Dipper chuckle. "OK, I admit to acting like an old man sometimes."

"Hey, there's a car pulling into the lot," Wendy said. "I'll unlock the gift shop door." She did—and a frog came hopping and plopping in.

"Thou coward!" it piped in its high voice, pointing an accusing green finger at Dipper. "Thou sneak! I waited for you outside the theater, and thou gav'st me the slip! But never underestimate the determination of a prince! Here I be—"

"Look, man, we're gonna have to do this some other time," Dipper said. "I'm on the job right now, and we've got customers on the way in."

"Yeah, dude," Wendy said. "A prince is like, _noblesse oblige,_ am I right?"

The frog looked momentarily confused. "Erm—aye, fair maiden. Nobility is gracious."

"OK, then, oblige us and let Dipper get his work day in, and later we can talk about you and your problems. Look, it's all rainy outside."

"Yes, good weather for a frog," agreed the frog.

Wendy, as if just getting a brilliant notion, added, "And, hey, if you go down the trail behind the Shack—don't fall into the Bottomless Pit, man—to that clearing where there's a campfire pit and some logs to sit on and turn left off the trail there and go through the clearing and keep going downhill, you'll find a nice little creek, mossy banks, smooth rocks, deep, still pools, and lots of frogs."

The frog blinked. "Lots of—frogs?"

"Lady frogs," Dipper added. "Beautiful. Nearly twice your size."

Another slow frog blink. "Um—lady frogs?"

"Tons of them," Dipper said.

"He's right," Wendy added as she saw five tourists hustling through the rain toward the museum entrance. "I know my forest species, and he's absolutely right. Kind of a shortage of male frogs back in there."

"I shall return at sunset!" the frog announced. It hopped to the door. "Um—little help? The steps are hard for me."

Dipper came around the counter, picked the frog up, and carried it outside and set it in the wet grass. The rain had settled into a steady, dismal shower, one of those that promised to last for hours, very fall-like. The frog took one hop and then turned and said, "This endeth not our enmity, varlet!"

"Of course not," Dipper said, pointing. "The trail is that way. Remember, watch out for the bottomless pit. Then about fifty hops along the trail, and turn to your left."

"I shall visit thee again ere long," the frog said. "And be warned, thou shalt rue the day!"

"Got it," Dipper said. "Set to rue. See you."

The frog went off in a series of energetic hops, three feet at a time, and Dipper broke out the mop and cleaned up the wet spots just as he heard Wendy beginning the museum spiel. Soos came in, adjusting his string tie, his eye patch flipped up on his forehead. "Whoa, man, what happened?"

"Nothing," Dipper said. "Just someone tracked in a little water. There, I got it." He put the mop back in the closet.

Soos peered out the window at the gray day and adjusted his eye patch. "OK. I guess we'll, like, not have anybody for the Mystery Trail ride until the weather clears up some. So, I'll, like, go and do the Mr. Mystery bit in the museum, and you and Wendy can, like, just hang or whatever, dawg."

"Thanks," Dipper said. "Soos—you're a better boss than Grunkle Stan was."

"Aw, not to me," Soos said warmly. "Stan's the best!"

Dipper's sense of a long-drawn-out rainy day hit the mark. The weather worsened steadily, with a discouraging shower that held tourism down. The first small gaggle of tourists, just one family of five, came into the shop, browsed, bought a few things, and then Wendy, holding a big golf umbrella, escorted them out to their car in two runs.

Meanwhile, Mabel called from Aunt Sallie's: "Hi, it's like really pouring up here. Aunt Sallie and I are gonna go tend the livestock in the barn. We have to evacuate her pig pen, so the pigs won't drown. I may hang here until the rain stops."

"Fine," Dipper said. "You do that. Just be careful. We don't have any business, so don't rush back."

The parking lot remained empty all morning, except for growing puddles, and Dipper and Wendy perched side by side on the two register stools and found time to talk. Dipper told her of Mabel's midnight plea for counseling, and what had gone on between them.

"Aw, man," Wendy sighed, making a face. "The girl trappin' the guy with sex—that's so cliché! But I don't think Mabel would really do it."

"I hope not," Dipper said. "It's gonna take some time for her to work through this, though."

"Yeah—she has these kind of stall-out spots on the road to growing up," Wendy agreed.

Dipper said, "What I can't get over is that she complained to me that Teek only thought about himself, not her. I mean—well, back just before Weirdmageddon, I considered taking Grunkle Ford's offer and moving to Gravity Falls to become his apprentice. Mabel had the exact same reaction then. And—well, you remember how that turned out."

"Mabel Land," Wendy said, rolling her eyes.

"Mabel Land. And Dippy Fresh," Dipper said bitterly. "I think Mabel's a lot—well, I won't say better, but a lot more considerate these days. But, man, when she's mad—"

"Yeah, she kinda backslides," Wendy agreed.

Dipper yawned. "Sorry. Got to sleep late. Yeah, she agonized over Teek's going to college out east while she goes to Olmsted. She even said she wouldn't be happy because you and I will be living together—if we both get into Western Alliance, I mean. Olmsted is not even a mile from the WAU campus, so—ah, she's just upset."

Wendy turned, leaning back against the counter, and gazed out the diamond-paned window at the driving rain. "Mm, yeah. Well . . .. OK. Didn't mean to spring this on you yet, Dip, but—since we're talkin' future plans, and you're already worried—" she reached beneath the counter for her purse, rummaged in it, and pulled out an envelope. "Check it out!"

Dipper took the envelope, saw that it was an embossed one with the blue seal of Western Alliance University and the words OFFICIAL BUSINESS stamped on beneath the address. It had been opened, but now the flap was tucked back inside. "Uh, you want me to read this?"

"You have my permission," Wendy said grinning.

Dipper took out and unfolded a sheet of thick, cream-colored stationery, also printed with the WAU seal in pale blue. Aloud he read, "'Dear MS Corduroy: It is our pleasure to accept you as a student in the College of Forestry, Western Alliance University, beginning fall term, 2017'—Wendy!"

He was off the stool and hugging her. He even picked her up, carried her out onto the floor, and swung her around, both of them giggling. Then he set her on her feet again and kissed her. "You got in!"

"Yeah, man!" Wendy said, impishly standing tight against him, her hands on his butt. "I was real bummed 'cause I got rejected the first time—well, not rejected exactly, but they told me I'd have to wait a year and re-apply—but then your Grunkle Stan drove me down and we both talked to the Admissions Committee, and—boosh! The letter came like two weeks later. One worry gone, Dip. You and me are headed to the same university."

"Wonder if they have coed dorms!" Dipper said. Emboldened, he put his hands on her hips, too.

Chuckling, she patted him. "Better break the hold in case Melody or Soos comes in. Yeah, step back and let's slow down, champ. Coed dorm? We're prob'ly gonna be looking at married housing."

"Oh, man, I can't wait, I can't—no, I can," Dipper said, deflating a little. "We made a vow. And also, I can wait to tell Mabel."

Wendy hugged him again. "Yeah, it'd make her think we're just being selfish. Gloating. You're right, let's wait to give her the news. Hey, it's ten-forty. Teek'll be showing up any minute, but with no tourists—guess we'd better also have a talk with him."

"I'll do it," Dipper said.

Wendy tilted her head, gazing into his eyes. "You sure?"

"I don't really want to," Dipper admitted. "You know, gonna be awkward and all. But I like Teek, and he and Mabel have to work something out, so, yeah, I'll talk to him. Call you in if I need help, though?"

She kissed his nose. "Anytime."

Teek's silver car came into the lot a few minutes later, and he jumped out and ran splashing to the gift shop entrance, holding his windbreaker up over his head like an abbreviated cape. He came in dripping. "Really pouring!" he said. "No customers, huh?"

"Very few," Wendy said. "Early in the week's slow anyway, but, you know—the rain and all."

"Need a towel?" Dipper asked.

"I know where they are, thanks." Teek went to the first-floor bathroom and came out looking marginally drier. "Uh—where's Mabel?"

"Gone to see the geep again," Wendy said. "I'll leave you two guys alone."

"Wait," Teek said. "You think I ought to get some food ready?"

"Mm, maybe get six burger patties ready to go. Hot dogs are easy. But I don't think we'll have a big lunch bunch. Don't worry, us and the Ramirezes can eat them!"

When Wendy left, Teek perched where Wendy had been sitting, on the stool behind the second cash register—it was still shrouded under its cover because of the thin traffic that morning—and reached to adjust his spectacles—he wasn't wearing any, he had his contacts in, but the gesture was a habit of his—and he said in a gloomy voice, "I guess Mabel told you, huh?"

"About your scholarship? Congratulations, man." Dipper held out his hand for a high five.

After an awkward pause, Teek slapped his palm and gave him a strained smile. "Thanks. But she's furious with me. Dipper, I didn't even _get_ the letter until last week, and I still haven't really made up my mind, but—she thinks I should have called her the instant the letter came. And that as soon as I'd talked to her, I should have turned down the scholarship."

"I don't know too much about the college in Atlanta," Dipper said. "How good is it?"

Teek leaned his elbows on the counter. "Oh, it's fully accredited, and the alumni are getting jobs with studios already. I checked it out. That movie about the haunted auto graveyard? A GACAF grad wrote the script for that. And there are grads working for Amblin', Marvel, and a half-dozen other studios that I know of, all departments, AD's, apprentice camera operators, set design and building, even a couple of actors. It's legit, and it's a good place."

Dipper noticed how Teek's face lit up as he talked about the college. "And you really want to take the offer?" Dipper asked.

Teek looked miserable. "Well—with the scholarship, I could finish in four years with a degree. Without it, I'll have to try to get into a West Coast film program, and if I manage to do that, I'll have to work my way through, so it might take six years. But I'd counted on Mabel—not going with me, I know about her plans—but at least supporting me. Being willing, you know, to wait. If it was the other way around, I'd wait for her. And I'm not mad at her," he said.

"You can be mad at her if you want to," Dipper told him. "I've been mad at her before."

"I don't think I could be, though," Teek said.

They seemed to have run out of words. For a long time, they sat there silently at the counter, listening to the steady, melancholy drum-beat of rain on the windows.


	6. Chapter 6

**Sixteen and Summer!**

 **(May-June 2016)**

* * *

 **6: A Naked Lady Walks into the Shack. . . .**

At noon, Soos came in and sighed. "Dudes, I'm gonna throw up the towel. The TV says the rain won't stop until after dark. Dipper, you want to check on Mabel's pigs? They should be OK where they are, but make sure their house isn't, like, flooding or some junk. I'm going down to the drive to put up the 'Closed' sign."

"Uh, I've got burger patties out," Teek said. "I'll cook them up for us. Shame to waste them."

"That would be cool!" Soos said, cheering up. "I'll take two, dude!" Teek's burgers were famous.

Soos had added hooks to the bottom of the sign that Mabel had painted years before and that now stood in a patch of rhododendron down at the foot of the driveway. He could hang informational signs from the hooks—LOT FULL, PARK ON GRASS, things like that. Now he rummaged in the closet and found the one he wanted: "TEMPORARILY CLOSED, BECAUSE JUST LOOK OUT YOUR WINDOW, DAWGS." He donned a yellow slicker and galoshes and sloshed out into the rain.

Dipper put on a tan poncho and went out the back door. The rain beat down on the plasticized fabric, making a snapping, crackling sound. Puddles inches deep stood in the yard, but Soos had wisely built the pig pen on a rise, and the drainage there was good. Dipper peeked into the heated house, which was full of clean, fresh straw. "You guys OK here?"

Two pink faces rustled out of the straw—which looked dry. Both Waddles and Widdles grunted and oinked sleepily.

Dipper tapped the side of the house gently. "OK, then, go back to sleep. Mabel will be home soon."

Even with the poncho on, Dipper was getting wet—in the intense rain, the shoulder seams leaked, and the old shoes he'd put on were soaked through, making his feet feel first wet, then numb from cold. However, he didn't run for cover—little use, because he felt about as wet as he could get already. He wanted to look around. Just out of curiosity, he splashed through the back yard and then to the Bottomless Pit.

It looked like the drain of a gigantic bathtub. Gurgling water poured in from all sides, a circular Niagara rushing down into the depths. Curiously, a tall fountain jetted out of the pit at the same time, spreading into a broad umbrella before breaking into huge plummeting drops. As much water came out as went in, it looked like, so the pit only added to the rush of incoming water.

Strange. As far as Dipper knew, only living things came back out of the pit, after twenty-two minutes of falling. He made a short video of the cold-water geyser to show to Ford, and then went back inside. In the entry way, he kicked off his sopping shoes, peeled off his wet socks, and then barefoot he went upstairs, toweled off, and changed into dry clothes. By the time he came down again, Soos was back and the smell of burgers tempted him to the dining room.

"Hey," Dipper said as he sat down at the table, "where's Wendy?"

Around a mouthful of burger, Soos said, "Oh, she wanted me to tell you. Sorry, dawg, slipped my mind. Her dad called and asked her to come home, like, almost an hour ago. The hillside down behind her house had like a mud slide or some deal, and he wanted her there in case they had to load up the truck and evacuate."

Dipper felt a little pang at that—why hadn't she told him? But he called her, and she reassured him: "We're OK. Just Dad being paranoid, man. A little part of the bank of the creek way down the hill collapsed, that's all. I checked it out, and everything else is stable. Would've told you before I left, but you and Teek were deep in conversation, and I didn't want to disturb. Want me to come back?"

"No, you don't have to," Dipper said. "Soos has closed the Shack for the day. Stay safe, Lumberjack Girl."

"You too, Big Dipper. And stay dry!"

Dipper thumbed the _off_ button, thinking, _This is how Mabel felt about Teek's not telling her he got the scholarship. Maybe not as bad, but—it does hurt a little bit._

Following lunch, Teek and Dipper cleaned up the grill, and Teek ran out through the rain to drive back home before the roads got worse. And not a minute after he left, Mabel called: "Dip, how're you guys doing?"

"We're keeping dry so far," Dipper told her. "Soos just made the rounds to inspect. The roof's not leaking the way it used to. Oh, Waddles and Widdles are safe and holed up in their straw. I checked, and they're fine. Are you on the way back?"

"No, that's the thing," Mabel said. "Prior Creek Bridge is covered with water, and the road's closed. The only other way is to drive over to the Dalles and cross there, but that's like an hour and a half more, and visibility's really crappy, the TV says. Sallie doesn't think I should try it, so she's offered me her guest room for tonight. Is that OK?"

"OK with me," Dipper said. "Wait a minute."

Melody agreed at once, and Soos said, "Oh, sure, dude. Tell Mabel that it's always better to be safe than soggy."

Dipper relayed the information. "Did, uh, Teek show up for work?" Mabel asked in a small voice.

Dipper walked a conversational tightrope: "Yeah, but we were getting no tourists, so Soos closed up. Then Teek cooked lunch for us and then he went home. Lucky he just has to drive into town. The roads around here are pretty wet, too."

"Oh."

The silence stretched out until Dipper broke it: "Mabel, Teek and I talked. You're miserable, and so is he. Come on, Sis. You two can work something out."

Mabel sniffed. "We can't if he's not talking to me."

"Don't be like that, Mabel! Look, one of you has to make the first effort. It should be you. He's kinda hesitant because you sort of scared him, I think."

"Scared him? How could I scare him?" she demanded.

"He's afraid," Dipper said quietly, "of losing you."

Angrily, Mabel began, "He should've thought of that before—"

"Mabel. Listen to me. Don't do this to yourself. Believe me, I know it doesn't help to beat up on yourself when you're feeling this way. Look, you help out Wendy's Aunt Sallie this afternoon. Keep busy. Rain's supposed to end around eight or nine tonight. You'll feel better tomorrow. If you're still not ready to talk it out with Teek, Wendy and I will listen to you. You can dump on us, we don't mind."

He heard Mabel take a long, deep breath, and then she whispered, "OK."

"Feel better, Sis," Dipper said.

"Thanks, Brobro." She sighed. "It's just—I had such big plans for the summer, you know? And then this crap hit me all at once, right at the beginning. Pulled the rug out, you know? Made me—what did Wendy say that one time? Made me rethink everything."

"As long as you think carefully and don't do anything dumb," Dipper said.

"I don't know _what_ to do. That's the trouble."

"Maybe you and Teek just need to hug it out," Dipper said.

She gave a weak chuckle. "Awkward boyfriend hug?"

"And don't forget the pats," he said. "Bye, Sis. Don't head back until the roads are clear and safe."

That afternoon, he went up to the attic and sat on the window seat overlooking the yard—the same place from where, in their first summer, he had looked out and spied on Mabel and Norman, worried that the odd-looking boy might be a zombie. He hadn't been.

He hadn't been a boy, either, but five Gnomes impersonating a human. It was scary at the time—and then infuriating—but from the experience, Dipper had written his first YA book, _Bride of the Zombie._ Which was coming out in paperback in mid-June, at the same time as the hardcover of his second novel, _It Lurked in the Lake,_ would be published.

He wished he could feel more excitement about that, but with all Mabel's drama and all his anxiety about not violating his and Wendy's oath—and her nearness and her desirability and the whole nine-yard-long ball of wax, as Soos might say, Dipper found even the prospect of a new book publication unexciting.

Even though his agent had told him recently that there was movie interest.

Not that it meant anything. Some studio had nibbled at the first book before, but no offer had come of that. Of course, since then, his first book had been on the best-seller list for fourteen weeks, number one for five of them. Maybe this time around, if some producer really was interested, something would click . . ..

The heck with it. He'd worry later. Right now, he had a book to read.

He held the thick volume on his knees: _Intrusions: When the Unreal Invades._ It was an older book, published in the 1960s, and the writer told a hodge-podge of anecdotes, all about dimensional leakage—uncanny beasts or people or objects that showed up and inexplicably vanished again.

One of the early chapters told of green children, a girl and a younger boy, who'd come out of a cave or a well in medieval Europe and who only slowly adapted to human food—at first, offered peas, they turned them down and instead ate the stalks and leaves of the pea vines. When they'd at last learned human language, they'd told people that they had come from a land where "everything is different." They couldn't say where it was or how they came to be there—they'd fallen through a hole in reality, the author decided. They never got home again.

The next chapter was an account of a water-horse, some kind of reptilian monster, that in the year 1422 had crept out of a Scottish lake. It wasn't water-bound, and it had legs and could walk on dry land, though out of water it seemed to be distressed. It was not quite Nessie, not quite a dragon, but somewhere in between. It terrified the villagers who lived near the lake when it came out after dark and wandered through the village as if hunting something. The creature had bellowed forlornly every night for two weeks, as though seeking a way to escape from the area. And when at last the desperate farmers armed themselves with fire and drove it back to the edge of the water—

It vanished, the book said, "as though going through an invisible gateway." It did not submerge or swim away. It just . . . popped out of existence.

Dipper only half believed in the stories. You had to take such tales with more than a grain of salt. Even so, he could sympathize with the terrified, baffled peasants.

Because there _could_ be something in the wild anecdotes, after all. He'd experienced more than a few odd things himself. Maybe Gravity Falls's brand of weirdness had once been more widespread. He yawned, lulled by the sound of the rain, and though he kept the book open, he started to daydream instead of reading.

The afternoon grew steadily darker, and the rain did not let up. Dipper yawned again and closed his book, then leaned against the wall and stared with a dull gaze out at the wet, gray day. The rain came in waves now, middling to heavy. When it was lighter, it made a million bulls'-eye rings in the shimmering puddles. When it came in a torrent, as it did for brief spells, the water leaped up a foot from the ground in shattered silver spray.

It reminded him of the time he and Mabel searched for (and finally found) Mayellen McGucket. A storm like this had flooded the barren flats between the Gnomes' territory and the cave where a monster had captured both Mayellen and Mabel. That was when the last two Dipper clones had—

Huh. A naked girl emerged from the direction of the Bottomless Pit, staggering across the grass.

Dipper gasped and sat up straight. "Wait, what?"

He rushed downstairs and found the Ramirezes in the parlor, watching TV. "Somebody—naked—out in the rain—quick!" he said.

He and Soos ran to the gift-shop porch. The girl, only twenty if that, was sobbing and staggering, her arms flailing. It was almost as though she were trying to leap. She had long dark-blond hair, plastered down across her neck and shoulders. Her breasts were shapely, her legs long and graceful—though they didn't seem to work well. Mud smeared them and her flanks, and stems of grass and weeds clung to her pale, pearly skin, faintly blue with cold. She kept flapping her hands at the pouring rain, and she shook with gasps and moans.

"Stop her, dude," Soos said. "I'll run and get Melody and a blanket or something!"

Dipper loped out into the rain. The girl saw him, and her eyes flashed wide with panic. She dropped to all fours and tried to spring away, like a cat leaping, but fell flat on her belly in a puddle.

"It's OK!" Dipper said. "I won't hurt you!"

She made a weird grunting sound and—tired to swim? She looked as though she were trying to do a breast-stroke, but the puddle was too shallow. Her buttocks clenched as she kicked her legs frantically.

Dipper hunkered beside her, grabbed her upper arm, and she froze and stared at him with terrified eyes. Brownish-yellow eyes. Her throat pulsed.

Crouching in the rain, Dipper said soothingly, "It's all right. It's OK. I won't hurt you, honest. What happened?"

Melody came out with a blanket. Together, they got the naked girl—really beautiful, if you ignored the mud and the scratches on her pale skin—to her feet, and Melody wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. "Come with us, sweetie," Melody cooed, being her most motherly as she put her arm around the girl's back. "Don't be afraid."

They half-supported her to the porch. She did not seem to know what steps were, but they urged her up, nearly lifting her from one to the next and to the porch, and then through the door.

"Go run some hot water in our tub," Melody told Dipper. "Then you'd better go change your clothes, too. You're soaked through."

Dipper did as he was asked. Wisely, Soos had retreated somewhere with the kids. After a quick hot shower and another change of clothes—he was going to have to do laundry sooner than he'd planned—Dipper hurried back downstairs.

The strange girl, or young woman, sat swaddled in a bathrobe too big for her, probably one of Soos's, on the sofa, her posture odd. She'd drawn up her legs and hunkered with bent knees, though Melody had made sure the robe covered her decently. Melody said softly, "Make her some hot tea, Dipper."

He did, but to no avail. The girl didn't seem to know what it was—or even how to drink it. Dipper demonstrated, taking small drinks and then holding the cup for her. Finally, she managed a few sips. She couldn't stop shivering.

"Did she tell you anything?" Dipper asked.

Melody shook her head. "I think maybe she's deaf. Or maybe she's foreign. Where did she come from?"

"I first saw her from the upstairs window, coming out of the woods, I guess? Along the Mystery Trail? She looked—uh, sick. Like she could barely walk."

"I don't know how to help her."

"I'll go call Ford."

* * *

Dipper went up to the attic to do that.

Immediately, Ford put two and two together. He listened to Dipper's account, then asked him what other weird things had happened recently. Dipper first said "Nothing," but then added, "Oh, there was this frog."

"Tell me about the frog."

"Well—to begin with, it talked." He described the frustrating amphibian who insisted he was a transformed prince—the plague, as Wendy had put it, of frog.

Ford murmured encouragement. "Very well," he said. "We'll need to check some things, but I think I know what must have happened." At Ford's direction, Dipper went down to the lab for an anomaly detector and used it—at a discreet distance—to scan the girl. He went back into the gift shop and read to Ford the figures that showed up on the screen.

"Interspecies transformation," Ford said at once. "She's not a human. She's probably a frog."

" _A frog?_ " Dipper asked.

"You said the talking male frog thought he was a prince. And you and Wendy sent him to find lady frogs in the ponds along the creek. I'd wager that the male mated, or attempted to mate, with a female, and instead of him becoming human, she did. Except she still has the mind of a frog."

"What do we do?" Dipper asked. "Are there pills for that, or—"

"It will probably wear off by itself," Ford said. "Unlike werewolf transformations, which are periodic and predictable, spontaneous interspecies transforms typically are unstable and her morphic field will right itself within a few hours. However, frog and human physiology are quite different, and she probably has been shocked by the change. How is her behavior?"

Dipper described it—her evident terror, her staggering walk, her strange efforts to get away when he had first confronted her.

"Mm-hm," Ford said. "Her temporary morphic field is human—she has human musculature, and her body tries to walk in a human way. But her mind tells her she's a frog, and that's why she tried to hop and then swim when you found her. The trouble is that her mental picture of herself—her morphic image—is at odds with the physical reality right now."

"What do we do?" Dipper asked.

"Well—it's difficult, there are no drugs to help, and the least thing could panic her and cause her to injure herself. You can do a few things, but you'll need help. Since you're a male, she'll see you as someone who might be interested in reproducing with her, and her last experience will make her afraid of that activity and leery of you. It would really be better if Wendy and Mabel—"

"They're not here," Dipper said. "Mabel's stranded because she drove up to—"

Without letting him finish, Ford cut in: "Melody will have to do, then. How old is the woman?"

"Young," Dipper said. "Older than I am, maybe a little older than Wendy, but not by much."

"Is she physically attractive?"

"Gosh, yes!" Dipper bit his tongue. "I mean, you know, her, uh, figure—and a pretty face—and she doesn't try at all to, uh, cover or hide her—herself."

"It's imperative to keep her in the house," Ford said. "If she got to the highway or into town, God knows what might happen to her. I wish Wendy were there."

"She said she could come back over. I'll give her a call. Meanwhile, what do we do with the, uh, naked girl?"

"Keep her inside, as I told you. She may not permit you to clothe her—to a frog, that would be like getting caught in a net. Keep her as quiet as you can. She won't know what to do, and her unfamiliar reactions and sensations may terrify her—she'll feel cold a lot more strongly than a frog would, for example, and that could make her ill. Keep her warm and still, and get her to eat something. Preferably flies. I'll be over in half an hour to do some tests."

Dipper felt as if he'd wandered into an advanced physics class and everything the teacher said sounded like gibberish. "Flies. Uh. Flies, flies. Huh. Flies. OK. Uh—will you alert the, you know, Agency?"

"Why should I?" Ford asked. "This isn't unusual. Not for Gravity Falls. Call Wendy. And hang on—I'll be there shortly."


	7. Chapter 7

**Sixteen and Summer!**

 **(May-June 2016)**

* * *

 **7: One Froggy Evening**

Ford looked in on the patient. The naked woman was in the oversized bathtub in the bathroom adjoining the master bedroom—Soos needed lots of room when he wanted to bathe—and the baseboard heater was on, making the room toasty. Melody had run about six inches of water in the tub. Under the influence of the water and the warmth, the Shack's nude guest had crouched down, knees bent, arms folded under her, and had fallen asleep.

While she slumbered, Ford used his instruments and ran a series of silent scans. Then he quietly stepped out and motioned Dipper to follow him to the parlor. "Her morphic field is starting to waver," he said. "That means she'll soon revert to, uh, her true froghood. You said she ate?"

"Flies, yes," Dipper said. He shuddered a little. The girl had licked them up from the palm of his hand. Her tongue had felt sticky, like wet flypaper. It was weird.

"How many?"

"I didn't really count," Dipper said. "Thirty? Something like that. As many as I could round up from the pigs' house. I couldn't find many in here, but they'd flocked in there to shelter from the rain, I guess. I took Mabel's old butterfly net out and just got as many as I could catch. She, uh, tried to stick her tongue inside the jar I put them in, but finally I had to hold them for her and she ate out of my hand."

"Gross," Wendy said.

Ford shrugged. "Well—not for frogs. And having a meal of a type she was accustomed to calmed her down, as I suspected it might."

"Dr. P, what's going on, exactly?" Wendy asked. "And should I be jealous?"

Ford shook his head. "No need for such an emotional reaction. The girl, who perceives herself as a frog, would feel no attraction for Dipper, and I'm pretty sure that Dipper—"

"No," Dipper said. "It's just too—too out there, you know? I mean, sure I noticed her, you know, body and all, I couldn't help that, but I didn't react to it. I mean, she's a frog inside!"

"Yes, and similarly, somewhere," Ford said, "there is a young woman whose body is here now. The young woman is dreaming she's a frog—or that's what she'll think when this ends. She's actually occupying the frog's proper body."

"So—like the electron carpet?" Wendy asked. "Like a mind swap deal?"

Ford held out his flattened palm and made a rocking gesture. "Yes—and no. This is more of a psychic than a physical trade."

"Wait," Dipper said. "What if the, uh, victim is hopping around in a swamp someplace? Won't she show up naked when, I don't know, they exchange again?"

"Unlikely," Ford said. "From what I learned in Dimension 6/0/9, when it's an animal/human exchange, first the exchange occurs while the human is asleep, and it's rare for the human to awaken until the change reverses. I postulate that the human half of this pair is somewhere in her own place, napping. If she wakes up naked, as she probably will if we succeed—because in frog form she wouldn't fit in human-sized clothes, and more than likely her tossing and turning will move her out of them—she'll wake up unclothed, but will more than likely chalk it up as a result of her nightmare. I regret that I can't put a tracer on her consciousness and discover who she is in her normal life—"

"I don't regret that at all," Wendy said. "Dipper might want to go visit her."

"Uh, no, I don't think so," Dipper said. He shook his head. "Anyway, that cleared up a question I had about relative mass."

"Ah," Ford said, smiling. "Good for you, Mason. You're thinking scientifically. Yes, if a human becomes a frog, there's a lot of excess mass to account for. By exchanging bodies, rather than a literal transformation, that mass is always there and just relocated within the time-space continuum."

"So," Wendy said, "does that mean the talking frog is, like, stuck in an exchange? Is there a prince somewhere that's in a loony bin 'cause he thinks he's a frog?"

"Something like that might have happened," Ford said. "Though these things are tricky. I'm pretty certain the woman is from our time and space, but the prince may have come from a somewhat different continuum, one with enough latent magic to punch him through to our reality. I'll have to examine the talking frog to see if that's happened."

"Listen!" Dipper said.

"Splashing," Wendy said, rising from her chair. "She's awake again."

"We'd better go check on her," Ford said.

"You stay here," Wendy told Dipper.

He squirmed. "I promise, I won't look at—"

"As a favor to me," Wendy said firmly.

He sat back down on the sofa. "Yes, Wendy."

Soos and Melody were in the gift shop, playing a game with Little Soos. Soos didn't want to have anything to do with the naked lady—"Brings back memories of Giffany, dude!"—and Melody thought it best if the kids weren't exposed to her. So to speak.

Dipper waited, wondering what was going on.

* * *

What was going on was a strange fluctuation in reality. The naked girl flopped and struggled, wide-eyed and terrified. Wendy knelt beside her and tried to comfort her by holding her hand. Which was sometimes a flipper.

"It's reversing," Ford said from behind her.

"Don't look at her," Wendy said. "She's scared."

"I'm not looking with concupiscence," Ford objected. "I'm only making scientific assessments."

Wendy shook her head, but kept her voice calm and level: "You're scaring her."

"I'll step out," Ford said. "But I'll want to interview you later."

"Fine, just go."

When Ford closed the bathroom door, Wendy said quietly, "It'll be better soon. I'm here."

The woman's body turned green, then pink again. Now her eyes bulged and her hair vanished, and now they were back to normal. And then, as she spasmed and splashed—

She shrank, dwindling down to a brownish-green—

Yes, frog. A spotted frog. Wendy loosed her hold. The frog sat in the water, breathing hard. It looked up at Wendy. Its throat ballooned, and it said, more or less, " _Rrrribbit_!"

"Dr. P!" Wendy called. "I think it's over now."

Ford came back in and scanned the frog. "Levels are approaching one hundred per cent," he said. Ninety-nine point four and rising. Yes, she's passed the tipping point. That took longer than I thought it would—seventy-nine seconds."

"Uh, what should I do with her? It? No, her," Wendy said. "After seeing her like she was, I can't think of this frog as an it!"

"Well, the kindest thing would be to take her back to her creek," Ford said. "But it's still raining."

"I think we ought to do it as soon as we can," Wendy said.

Ford nodded agreement. "I'll go to the lab and bring back a cage."

"On your way, tell Dipper it's OK to come in."

"Wendy, I don't think he was aroused by—"

Wendy chuckled. "Dr. P, I trust Dip. It's just—look, if it happened to me, I wouldn't want a boy I didn't know lookin' at me in the nude. Or lookin' at my body, anyhow, even if I was off being a frog somewhere else."

"I see," Ford said. He left, and in a few seconds, Dipper came to the door.

"Here she is, dude," Wendy said. "Still naked."

"She's a good-looking frog," Dipper said.

"You up for slogging out in the rain and taking her back to her home?"

"Are you?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna do it. I kinda feel like I owe it to her."

"I'll go with you," Dipper said. "I think there are a couple of flies left if you want to offer her a snack."

* * *

At least the rain had tailed off to a steady light shower. Ford, Wendy, and Dipper set off toward the trail. Dipper pointed out the Bottomless Pit's fountain.

"Oh," Ford said, "you've never seen it do that before? It always does in an exceptionally heavy rain. It will settle down as the rain soaks into the earth. Once in a blizzard I saw a snow geyser. It was interesting from a scientific point of view."

Wendy carried the little cage. The frog seemed tired, but no longer afraid. Though sunset was still a few hours off, the day was dark—heavy cloud cover lingered, though the rain had slacked.

The Mystery Trail resembled a creek. They kept to the grassy edges and squished through the bonfire clearing and then down the hill. "Oh, my gosh, look at that," Dipper said.

The little stream that wandered among rocky outcrops had swollen to river size. It rushed along in a foaming earth-colored torrent. "We can't drop her into that!" Wendy said.

Ford advised, "No, just release her here. The water will subside, and by dawn she should be able to find her home pool."

"Varlet!" shouted a high-pitched voice.

"Oh, God," Wendy groaned. "The plague's on the other side of the creek."

"I think he's sitting at the base of the bigleaf maple," Dipper said, pointing. "Hey, Prince, is that you?"

"Thou retreats't behind thy moat, vile miscreant! We have still a reckoning to—"

"Dude, we brought back your froggy lady friend!" Wendy said. "I'm letting her out of the box now."

The frog she carried hopped from the cage, looked at the torrent, hopped instead to a puddle, and settled in, apparently waiting.

"Hey!" Dipper yelled. "You turned her into a human! Don't try to make out with other lady frogs!"

"I wondered how she grew so big so suddenly! But thou has falsely spoken of me, knave—"

"I can help you!" Ford shouted.

"—and must yet answer for thy insolence—wait, what?"

Calling distinctly, Ford said, "I think I know how to restore you to your, uh, princehood! You can get your own body back! And maybe the body you're currently in will remain here and be an ordinary frog again, and he and this fine specimen of _Lithobates_ can be mates!"

"Art thou a wizard?"

"What?" Ford asked.

But Dipper yelled, "Yes, he's a wizard! A great wizard! Trust me on this!"

Suspiciously, the frog demanded, "Be thou a good wizard, or a bad wizard?"

"He's good, dude!" Wendy yelled.

"Wait, I come!"

"Hold on!" Dipper yelled. "You'll be washed—shoot!"

The frog had leaped headlong into the swollen creek.

"That's probably the end of him," Wendy said. "Last we'll ever see of him."

"Wait," Ford said. "He might surprise you."

And he did. The frog emerged a hundred yards downstream, but he had managed to cross the river. He shouted until Wendy went and found him and persuaded him to climb into the cage.

When she returned, he was holding onto the cage bars and flirting with her: "My fiery-haired Princess! Queen of the realm of Prom! Thou hast pitied me! I have won thy heart! I knew my princely charms would—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Wendy said. "Tell me about it later, dude. Here ya go, Dr. P." She handed the caged frog over.

"What are you going to do to him?" Dipper asked.

"Take him to my lab and if I can get a fix on his proper location in space and time, run him through a continuum translocater," Ford said.

"Oh," Dipper said. After a beat, he asked, "And what does that mean?"

Ford had been studying the frog, who was striking poses. "Hmm? Oh, briefly, the prince whose mind is in this frog's body is obviously not from our own time. His body is still in his own spacial and temporal location, but our frog's mind is in it. Um, Your Highness, what year is this?"

"How should I know, wizard?" the frog asked sourly. "A foul witch bespelled me with her magic, and the next thing I knew, here I was, where the princesses be so haughty they scorn my pleas for succor—"

"Hey! Watch your mouth," Wendy warned.

"What," Ford said, overriding her, "is the year you last remember living in when you were a human?"

"Why, the forty-seventh year of the reign of the third King Edward! A nephew of his was I, most fair to behold—"

"He's not speaking Middle English," Dipper pointed out.

"His vocal patterns and thought patterns are affected by the continuum shift," Ford said. "He's picking up the surrounding idiom."

"Art listening to me?" demanded the frog.

Surprisingly, Ford said, "Aye, and marking you too, my liege." He gave Dipper a wink.

"That's better," the frog said.

"That would be the year 1374," Ford said. "I suspect, though, that the prince is not from our history, but from a related and nearby continuum. The translocater should be able to sort him out unless it's too far removed. That's probably how he got stuck—the psychic exchange reached too far to find a frog and his reality couldn't snap back the way the lady frog's did."

"I understand thee not," the frog complained.

"Never mind," Ford said. "I'll fix you up, or I'm not the wizard you think I am."

"Ooh! Burn!" Wendy murmured to Dipper, who had to laugh a little.

Damp as they were, Wendy and Dipper went down to Ford's lab, where he set up a ray gun-like device. Correction, a ray cannon-like device, one of those science-fictiony machines with a big metal globe and a cone with round discs of diminishing size girdling it.

"What be that?" the frog asked nervously.

"That," Ford said, "be, as you say, my magic wand."

"Thou hast a prodigious wand!" the frog gasped.

"Yeah," Wendy said mischievously. "Other wizards are full of wand envy when they get a load of that thing. You think that's something, you ought to see his great-nephew's! Mighty wands run in the family, dude."

Dipper blushed. "Uh, are we talking—"

Wendy grinned and zipped her lip.

Humming, Ford powered up the device. "All right, Your Highness, you sit here on the floor. Make yourself comfortable. I'm going to do a couple of quick scans—uh, I'm going to summon the occult knowledge of wizardkind to make sure my magic will follow the right-hand path of good sorcery and not harm you, I mean—and then I shall work my magic."

"I hope thou knows't what thou dost," muttered the frog.

Ford studied readouts on his computer. "Ah, yes, here we go. Just one continuum away, so this will be easy. Hmm. His continuum does have quite a bit of magic in it—their Merlin was a real person, according to this—all right, let me set this . . . and the coordinates in time . . . and geographic . . . there. Dipper, read those three lines of figures to me, please."

Dipper looked at the banks of red LED figures. "First line, 100, 100, 100. Second one, 22, 33, 99. Last one, 01, 50, 100."

"Perfect." Ford put on a six-fingered rubber glove and took hold of a fork switch. "My liege! Prepare to be restored to your proper form. You may feel a slight pinch."

He threw the lever, and from the conical projection of the device a bolt of brilliant purple lightning zigzagged out and struck the frog. It rose about three inches in the air, jerking and contorting and furiously vibrating.

"Whoa!" Wendy said as for just a split instant the transparent figure of a full-sized naked young man replaced it, juddering and jerking, his eyelids blinking rapidly, left, right, left, right—and then with a poof, the human figure vanished and the frog plopped to the floor and hopped around randomly.

The machines buzzed to silence. Ford leaned over. "Your Highness?"

The startled frog tried to leap away from him and nearly knocked itself unconscious against the base of a table.

"Let me get him before he hurts himself," Wendy said, picking up the still-twitching amphibian. "Gross, he peed on me! Dipper, open the cage."

She dumped him in, and then she went upstairs to wash her hands in very hot water.

Ford scanned the frog. It showed up as 100% frog.

"What do I do with it?" Dipper asked.

"Set it free on the Mystery Trail," Ford said. "Go out as far as the bonfire clearing. There's plenty of water from the rain, he'll have places to hide from any predator, and he'll find his way back to the creek eventually."

"Be right back."

Dipper had to struggle with an impulse to toss the troublesome animal into the Bottomless Pit, cage and all, but he took it to the bonfire clearing instead, a little way downhill, and then released it. It leaped away as if scared of the big creature who'd held it captive in a box.

Back in the Shack, Dipper found that Wendy had changed into her spare clothes, kept in a locker for emergencies. He went up and put on his last pair of jeans and a tee shirt. "Everything else I've got is either wet or dirty," he complained.

"Hey, Melody!" Wendy called. "The frog's all taken care of, and the girl's gone for good. OK to use your washer and dryer?"

Melody said it was, so as Ford returned his lab to its normal order, Wendy and Dipper spent a very domestic evening doing laundry. After they put the big load of shirts and jeans in—Soos had bought a nearly industrial-sized washer and dryer, because he still sort of hoped to have seven kids one day—they went back to Dipper's room and stretched out on his bed (both fully clothed, both too tired to think of even a mental make-out session) and relaxed. "So," he asked, trying to make his voice casual, "When the frog turned human there for a second, uh, what did you think of—how he looked?"

"Meh, he was OK, I guess," Wendy said. "Muscular, but sorta dim int he head, I'd say. Did the lady frog really not appeal to you?"

He took her hand. – _Look inside and see._

Wendy smiled. _Didn't even get a rise out of you, huh? Well, I didn't get worked up over the prince, either. He may have a broadsword, but give me a Pines wizard who knows how to use a sturdy wand—_

Dipper said, nearly choking with the giggles, "Stop it, please! This is starting to sound like Harry Potter euphemisms."

"OK," Wendy said. "Until it's time to dry your laundry, let's just rest here and, like, not think of anything, just for a change."

And for a pleasant couple of hours, they did.

By the time Wendy left for home, the rain was only a drizzle, somewhere behind the clouds and beyond the cliffs the sun had just gone down, and Dipper had a basket of shirts and pants to fold and put away.

Well, he reflected as he carried the warm basket upstairs, at least for that whole afternoon he hadn't been worrying about Mabel.

That was something, anyhow.


	8. Chapter 8

**Sixteen and Summer!**

 **(May-June 2016)**

* * *

 **8: Mabel Ponders**

Mabel's sleepover at Aunt Sallie's took her mind off her troubles, at least. She and Sallie worked on a patchwork quilt on Tuesday evening. Then on Monday, Sallie roused her up early—five-thirty!

And before having their own breakfast, they squelched out to the barn—Sallie gave her some oversized galoshes to wear so the mud and muck wouldn't ruin her shoes—where they milked the cows and the nanny-goats, checked in on Gompers and his mate and their geep, which was almost weaned, and Mabel fed her army of chickens, which seemed to have fixated on her as the Supreme Chicken Leader of the world. That was fun.

Then Sallie cooked a farmhouse breakfast: Small steaks, fried eggs, home-canned apple slices with a generous dose of cinnamon, and thick delicious slices of toasted home-baked bread dripping with butter Sallie had churned herself. Her coffee was stronger than Mabel was used to, though it would lose an arm-wrestling match with Mabel juice. They had the TV on in the next room as they ate, and the newscaster turned the program over to the weather lady.

"The storm has moved on out, tracking over Idaho," she said, "and it's about time! The streams have passed their flood peak, and except for a few back roads where there have been mud slides or downed trees, everything looks passable again. About three thousand Oregonians are without power this morning, but crews are working to repair broken lines . . .."

Despite the weather woman's reassurance, Aunt Sallie warned Mabel to drive carefully and told her to call when she got back to the Shack. And she gave her a cardboard box with an assortment of a dozen glass jars swaddled in layers of newspaper. The box was heavy, because the jars were full of her canned preserves, gifts that Sallie asked Mabel to take to her brother Danny. It was hard for Mabel to think of the hulking Manly Dan as Danny—that was what Pacifica called her formerly vampire boyfriend.

With the box of preserves in the trunk, Mabel set off around eight, got to the stretch of highway leading to the bridge that had been closed during the storm, and joined a slow, creeping line of traffic. Eventually she saw that the bridge was the bottleneck. State troopers in their blue uniforms and Smokey Bear hats were letting only one car at a time go across.

She rolled her window down and when she got close to a particularly handsome policeman, she called, "Is it safe, Officer?"

"Yes, it is," he said, grinning. "We're not taking any chances with weight, that's all. The DOT will check the bridge out as soon as the water goes down a little more, but it seems solid."

"You guys are so terrific," she said.

He touched the brim of his hat in a two-finger salute. "Thank you. You can go."

Rats. She hadn't seen his name tag. Sighing at lost opportunities, Mabel edged Helen Wheels across the bridge at ten miles per hour.

As she did, she noticed the creek was still swollen—though the mud marks on the bridge railing indicated the water level had already sunk at least four feet—and as she got closer to the Valley, she kept seeing big flooded sections of fields, looking more like ponds than farmland. Now and then the car splashed through standing water but, fortunately, did not hydroplane.

She got to the Valley and as the road wound toward town, she gasped. Gravity Falls Falls had never been as enormous as it looked—at least she couldn't remember its being so robust. Normally a thin rush of water, now it was a vertical torrent of foaming white, maybe four times wider than usual.

Intrigued, Mabel detoured to the lake and saw that it had crept up too, covering half the beach. The ranger station looked as if it were floating on the water—the piers were almost submerged.

She got back to the Shack close to nine, in time to see Dipper and Wendy as they emerged from the kitchen, Wendy in her green blazer with its gold MANAGER name plate. "Sis!" Dipper said. "Why didn't you call? We were starting to worry about you."

"Oh, I was OK," Mabel said. "Wendy, your aunt is so cool! Oh, I've got a load of canned fruits and pickles that she sent to your dad. I'll stow it in your car before you go home."

"Great," Wendy said. "The Green Machine's unlocked, so just put it in the rear floor. How was the drive?"

Mabel smiled. "Not bad. Lots of wet spots in the road. Hey, did you guys notice the Falls?"

"All the waterfalls are huge," Dipper said.

"Lake's up, too."

"It'll drain off pretty quick. Hey, we made a breakfast casserole, that one with the potatoes and eggs and bacon that you like. There's some left."

"I already had breakfast—but sold!" Mabel said. She had a smallish (for her) helping as she heard the day begin—some tourists came in, Soos did his Mr. Mystery bit, and Wendy and Dipper went to the gift shop. When Mabel had finished her second breakfast, she washed up her dishes, went out and moved the preserves from her car to Wendy's, and then joined them as they set up the gift shop for business.

"You guys get through the flood OK?" she asked as Dipper loaded change into the cash register.

"Yeah, no damage done," Wendy said. "Had to deal with this irritating talking frog, but aside form that, just got soaked. Soos isn't going out on the Mystery Trail for a day or two—all mud back in there."

"You should've seen the Bottomless Pit!" Dipper said. "It turned into a fountain. It's stopped now, though."

"Talking frog," Mabel said, raising an eyebrow.

"Enchanted prince," Wendy told her, rolling her eyes. "But what a doofus."

"He turned another frog into a naked girl," Dipper said. "Human, I mean."

Mabel's eyes grew huge. "Whoa-ho-ho! Naked? You saw this bare froggy person?"

"Yeah, I was the first to run and try to help her," Dipper said. "It's OK, Ford came and he figured out a way to change her back into a frog—"

"Gah! You're not telling the story right! Start from the beginning, I have to hear this," Mabel said.

But six tourists came in, and Wendy said, "Later."

Mabel had a great many sterling qualities.

Patience wasn't one of them.

Even though there was no need, she hopped on the stool for the second cash register, borrowed money to stock it from Dipper, and rang up purchases together with her brother. In the intervals when no tourists had lined up with purchases, she got the whole story from him, bit by bit.

"Blonde?" she asked, keeping her voice to a whisper, though Mabel whispers tended to carry. "Seriously? A blonde frog?"

"Well, blonde when she was a person, she wasn't a frog," Dipper pointed out reasonably. "And she wasn't as blonde as Pacifica. Darker shade."

"Natural blonde?" Mabel asked.

Dipper stared at her. "How would I know?"

"Broseph, you are so immature!" Mabel said. "Carpet and drapes?"

"I don't even know what you're talking about," Dipper complained.

Mabel looked around, but Wendy was on the other side of the shop, showing some tchotchkes to an older couple. More tourists were in the museum and would soon spill into the gift shop, but for the moment the coast was, if not clear, at least only mildly hazy. Lowering her voice, she said, "You know how when you're looking at nude redheads on the Internet, you can sometimes tell they dye their hair because if you look in the right _place_ -?"

"Oh!" Dipper said. "I know what—I mean, I don't look at that many red—um. Uh, yeah, I guess she was, you know, a real blonde."

"Hah! You looked!"

Dipper's face was turning red. "She didn't _hide_ anything, OK? She was a sort of darkish blonde. Medium-length hair, 'bout shoulder length. It might have been lighter than I thought, because it was wet. Well, until she turned back into a frog. Then she didn't have any hair at all."

Mabel's voice became sultry as she teasingly asked, "How about the prince?"

Dipper shrugged. "He was mostly this annoying frog. What, you want to know what he looked like as a prince? You'll have to ask Wendy. He turned back into a human, but vanished while that was going on. We got a flash of him—"

"I'll bet you did!" Mabel said, too loud. "Naked, too?"

"Yeah," Dipper said. "Shh!"

Mabel grinned her goofiest. "Oo la la! How did he—" she wriggled her fingers—"stack up?"

"Mabel! I didn't notice. Wendy was here, you can ask her. That's not the kind of thing guys talk about. Yes, ma'am, I can check you out right here."

The grandmotherly lady had quite an assortment of goodies, from a detailed wooden model of the Shack itself to a _qiú qiān_ set of Chinese fortune-telling sticks, a set of runestones from Sweden, a crystal scrying ball from England, and a little fragment of the Blarney Stone—or at least a stone that had known the Blarney Stone before it got famous, anyway, from Ireland. It came to more than a hundred bucks, and somewhere Grunkle Stan probably sensed the sale psychically and grinned.

Mabel also got busy as a couple of kids came to her register with Tarot cards, magic wands guaranteed to perform just as much magic as any other stick would do, and some other mystic mumbo-jumbo-dumbo souvenirs.

And so the morning passed without much excitement, up until a few minutes before eleven, when Teek came in.

* * *

Unexpectedly, tourist traffic turned heavy that first day of June—not as heavy as after the middle of the month, when the run-up to the Fourth of July filled the Shack with gawkers and browsers, but they got many more customers than they had during the last week in May. Wendy took the second register when Mabel deserted it, Dipper practically played a fast version of "Chopsticks" on the original one, and the tourists—and the money—poured in.

"I'll go do the snack-bar register," Mabel said. That was usually Abuelita's station, but since she had grown friendly with Teek, Mabel often took it.

As she went down to the snack-bar entrance, Wendy said, "Maybe she's getting over it, Dip."

"I hope so," he said. "Her having a feud with Teek could ruin the whole summer."

Teek was kept busy as a short-order cook—and people not only occupied all the tables in the small space (room for twenty diners at a time), but others got take-out bags. Some of them mentioned to Mabel that the online guide to Oregon tourist destinations made special mention of the unusually good food to be had at the Shack.

"Yeah," Mabel said with a smile, "we've got the best cook in central Oregon." And she even gave Teek a thumbs-up, which put a smile on his face, too.

Even without the Mystery Trail excursions, Soos worked himself hard as Mr. Mystery. His appeal to the tourists had a completely different quality from Stan's. Stan was, or else played the role of, a jolly con man who knew full well his victims were in on the con, but he played it for laughs because the entertainment value was high. The rubes, as he called them, collaborated cheerfully and willingly in their own fleecing—never more obviously than when he produced a bag and advised them, "Here, you can put money in this if you wanna."

They always did.

Soos was different—because, unlike Stan, he _believed._

Not in the exhibits. He knew the exhibits were all fake, or almost all fake. However, with all his Soosian heart he believed in the dream they represented—in childlike wonder, in excitement over the possibility of magic. And when he told stories of his own experiences with the uncanny, the tourists oohed, aahed, and clapped their admiration.

Dipper had heard him winding up an anecdote before: "But it wasn't a monster, at all, dudes. Beaver with a chainsaw!" He got laughs and praise.

And money.

That Wednesday, the tourist flood didn't ebb until late afternoon. By then Teek had finished his shift, he and Mabel had cleaned the snack-bar grill—silently, working side by side but not talking—and then Mabel checked with Wendy. "OK if Teek and I go for a little walk? Do you need us?"

"Nah," Wendy had said. "Take off. We're good."

She and Dipper watched the two teens walk out the gift-shop door and head for the Mystery Trail.

"Hope they work it out," Dipper said.

Wendy nodded. "Hope so too." A tourist approached with a question. "Yes, sir, that object is a genuine Navajo weather stick. Fell off the shelf accidentally, the day before yesterday, and you see the rain it brought us! Usually sells for a hundred, but because of it being a nuisance with the rain, it's yours for seventy-five."

She sold it.

Oh, and usually it was twenty-five.

Somewhere Stan was rubbing his hands together and murmuring, with a tear in his eye, "That's my girl!"

* * *

"I don't _want_ to make up," Mabel told Teek. They'd reached the bonfire clearing, but the logs were too damp for sitting, so they leaned against the relatively dry trunk of a tall pine, side by side, but still apart. "Not just yet. I gotta sort out my feelings."

"Mabel," Teek said, "I'm here anytime you need me. Or want me. I'm sorry, but you know, it's a hard decision for me, too. Look, I don't have to give a definite answer until the first of September, but by then—I have to make up my mind to accept the scholarship or turn it down. Tell you what: I'll wait for you to decide whether you can live with my going away or not. We'll have our talks and maybe come to, I don't know, a compromise, or something that we can both live with. I don't want to lose the scholarship, but Mabel—I don't think I could stand to lose you."

"Yeah," she said. "I don't want to lose you, either. But if you gave it up because of me and then resented me because I was the reason—that wouldn't be good. You know it wouldn't. And I _can't_ leave California. I've had my heart set on Olmsted for more than a year now, and it means so much to me." She gave him a sickly smile. "I guess as much as GACAF means to you, huh?" She sighed.

"It's going to be awkward," Teek said. "So—about us? Cool it for now, or what?"

"Yeah, I guess, cool it," Mabel said. "We can hang together, go to movies, that stuff. But no snuggling and, what do they call it in Harry Potter, snoggling? Snogging. None of that until we get things settled." She shrugged. "If you want to go out with other girls, I guess I'm OK with that. But if I get mad—well, it's 'cause I love you."

"I love you too, Mabel."

"Stinks when love hurts so much," she muttered.

"Yeah," he agreed.

"OK," Mabel said in a tired voice. "Let's understand the rules. Gotta have rules, my Brobro's always saying. Like he and Wendy can make out, but just up to a point. They're saving each other for when they get married."

Teek was blushing. "You don't have to tell me about—"

"We're not gonna cross that line, either," Mabel said. "Well—not unless some miracle happens and things get a lot better between us, anyhow. For the time being, we'll be—" she paused and then, as though the word tasted sour, she said, "friends. Friends for the time being. And if you want to go out on a date with somebody else, you can, and if I do, I can. But we _won't_ rub it in each other's faces. And we'll try not to fight. Because I don't _want_ to fight."

"Me either," Teek said.

"OK, so that's where we stand." She blew out a long breath. "I hate it."

"Mabel, I'm OK with that if it's what you want. I don't think I'll be dating anybody else, but—if that's the way you want it for now, I'll go along, and if you want to go out with somebody—like you say, just don't rub it in. I'll try not to let it make me mad. Only tell me if I hurt you. I never want to do that. Please promise me that."

"Oh, if you hurt my feelings, you'll know about it," Mabel said, her grin verging on the dangerous.

There wasn't much more to discuss. They walked back to the Shack. They didn't hold hands, they didn't kiss. Teek got in his car and left for home.

Mabel went inside the Shack and disappeared somewhere.

When Dipper went up to the attic to rest and read a little before dinner, he found her there, in her old bed, back to him, face to the wall, blanket pulled up to her ears..

"Sis? You OK?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said.

But he could see that she was crying.

* * *

 _The End_


End file.
